The first Lent that was really meaningful for me was when I spent my freshman year in the seminary…which in turn was at a monastery…in the middle of nowhere…with 3 televisions for 120 people…
Needless to say, I didn’t watch television much my freshman year. I had been virtually addicted to television sitcoms in my high school years, so it was a drastic change. When I went home for Christmas, I realized that I had grown an intense distaste for television. I realized that Everybody Loves Raymond is a half-hour of a family bicker amongst themselves. We watch this garbage? Really?
Anyway (getting to the point), by the time Lent rolled around, I had been more or less detoxed from the secular culture. Time at the seminary was easy and light. Like you in your Lenten story, I had no job and no income (other than very minimal stipends). I did, of course, have a course of study. Over Christmas I had a major sinus reconstructive surgery (ouch) which resulted in frequent nosebleeds and kept me from eating anything substantial for a while (food is not appetizing when all you smell all day is your own rotting and healing flesh). The surgery happened not long before Lent. Consequently, between Christmas and Easter, I lost 50 lbs. and spent much of my time financially broke, in pain with physical ailments, blood loss, and an odoriferous awareness of my own mortality. I learned to rely on God. I was the happiest I’d been in my life. I experienced, like you, a taste of that upside-down worldview Chesterton described of St. Francis of Assisi. That whole year had purged me of my comforts, taught me what was truly necessary, given me an inclination toward recollection. The silent retreats gave me solace.
I left the seminary, though, feeling called to marriage, and slowly was re-introduced to the world. It’s been a mild sort of roller coaster, back and forth between fervor and a sort of lukewarmness. I guess that’s to be expected. Still, that time gave me a vision of what God could make of me, and I long to find the same peace now in my family life. The constant temptation, though, is to withdraw and be a monk in my own home, but that just won’t do.
Thank you, Mark, for your Lenten testimony. It’s rekindled something in my recalling all this. Question for you: is there a spiritually safe way to balance family life with this kind of detachment from the world?