Lent, Time, and Giving of Ourselves

In the modern world, does our almsgiving look different?

Every Orthodox Christian knows that Lent is at least partially about services. We think in terms of the Canon of St. Andrew for the first four days, Presanctified Liturgy on Wednesdays and Fridays, an extra midweek liturgy for Annunciation, and let’s not even think (yet) about all the services of Holy Week.

But sometimes Lenten service is not about attending church. Sometimes it’s about rendering service to those near to us. This past week, I spent most evenings and mornings helping out with grandchildren because of emergencies in their family. Will God judge me for missing every evening of the Canon and some days of my Psalter-reading commitment? I don’t think so.

If Lent has hit you with full force in the realm of unexpected (and usually inconvenient-to-highly distressing) events, don’t despair. Maybe your best-laid plans for prayer and fasting have gone agley, but you are still fighting the battle. Not the battle you planned for, but the battle that is put in front of you. And that is all any of us can do.

- Katherine Bolger Hyde

I appreciated this Substack note by Katherine the other day. Our Lent, as is somewhat typical, has started off in a rather intense fashion. It is somewhat of a running joke between our godparents and ourselves that we wonder what will break or who will get sick as Lent begins- it happens like clockwork. So expected, and frankly, such a cheap shot if we can see it coming, Enemy. So much so that we just roll the idea that everything that can go wrong will go wrong into our preparations for the Lenten season.

Such has been our first two-ish weeks- broken faucets, a busted tire, a police ticket for a busted tail-light, a whole house in disarray from repairs. And suddenly, this Sunday at Liturgy- the flu, for three of our children. Whom we would not have brought to Liturgy had we realized they were ill, but they, nor us, realized until they were literally passing out (in the case of one child) and almost passing out and having a seizure (the other child) right as communion began. Woof. Once we received, we left before services ended, which we absolutely hate to do, but there was no way we could stay. At least we made it through communion?

Which leads me back to Katherine’s statement. Sometimes we get so locked into what a “Good” Lenten pilgrimage is, we forget it is individual for each one of us, and each of us will face our own battles and challenges within it.

Somewhat due to this Technological Examination of Conscience that Kerry Christopher shared,

A Technological 'Examination of Conscience'

I have been thinking very carefully about what my own Lenten pilgrimage needed to look like. In the end, I found the parable of the Wise Virgins (Matthew 25) to be my template this year.

So, olive oil lamps are interesting. If you don’t regularly tend a vigil lamp, you probably don’t get the quiet intricacies of what is being referred to in the passage, but if you’ve been Orthodox for any length of time and have a recalcitrant vigil lamp in your prayer corner that you’ve had to learn how to attend to, it will suddenly be freshly illustrated in your mind. While vigil lamps are almost ‘light and go’, the wick has to be regularly trimmed. The oil has to be refreshed. It requires a quiet attention every few hours. If you don’t, it burns out. The wick stops twisting up, it smokes. It’s a whole thing.

Ohhhh.

Katherine’s words again: “But sometimes Lenten service is not about attending church. Sometimes it’s about rendering service to those near to us.”

Which is making me consider this: in addition to the regular idea of alms giving, in such a time as this, should my concept of alms-giving also extend to the giving of time- especially face-to-face loving attention and tending of the people within my family, my parish, and my extended community? Our communities are so increasingly divided and fractured, and what if my small gift goes some small way towards stitching that chasm back together?

I am in a somewhat challenging, and maybe not as unique a situation as it sometimes feels, role- of being the mom to two rare disease kiddos, suffer from a rare disease myself, and care for my husband, who probably has the rarest disease of all of us in the family, and whom is steadily declining. We really can’t attend the services like we used to. I used to serve as a chorister/chanter, and Lent meant I spent most of my time singing the services. Now, I barely sing- sometimes only once a month. The physical effort required for my husband to attend a service is immense- and the recovery period from doing so, long. If my health was a bit more stable, I could perhaps handle taking the children to more services on my own, but my own exhaustion limits me. My older children, thankfully, can attend on their own as they can drive, but still. It is a strange period.

And yet. While I can’t attend the services like I wish, I can tend my lamp here at home, and be faithful in the small things. Faithful with the prayer rule. Making sure we are reading and praying together in the evenings. Serving in the place where I am called, right now. Waiting, and watching. The Bridegroom will come.