Spring Cleaning
Every year at this time my mother would rearrange the furniture in the living room and family room and change the drapes. Then she would open the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen, remove all the dishes, glasses, cups, goblets, plates, pitchers, platters, bowls, casseroles, china, and silverware to clean them. It was as if we were preparing for the biggest banquet of the year. She called this cleansing fury spring cleaning.
Every year at this time my mother would rearrange the furniture in the living room and family room and change the drapes. Then she would open the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen, remove all the dishes, glasses, cups, goblets, plates, pitchers, platters, bowls, casseroles, china, and silverware to clean them. It was as if we were preparing for the biggest banquet of the year. She called this cleansing fury spring cleaning.
Every year at this time the Church gives us the opportunity to do some inner spring cleaning. In fact, the word “Lent” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning spring. Lent is a prime time to rearrange our priorities, to open the cupboards of our hearts and hold our egos to the light to see those areas that need to be cleaned and polished. This idea of inner cleansing or conversion has always been at the heart of Lent. In the early Church, Lent was the final leg of the journey for the catechumens preparing for baptism. It was also a time when already-baptized penitents, isolated from the assembly because of their sins, would prepare to be reconciled to God and the community. The journeys of the catechumen and the penitent were related in that both embraced a significant conversion. As the catechumen looked forward to baptism, the penitent looked forward to reconciliation, often seen as a second baptism. To this day, the focus of Lent remains both baptismal and penitential.
It is easy to rearrange chairs and to clean dishes. Inner change is the real challenge. Therein is the good news. It is God who calls us to conversion and it is God’s transforming grace that accompanies us on the journey of conversion. Let us pray for the courage to be open to this grace that we might come to Easter, the biggest banquet of the liturgical year, with hearts cleansed and spirits renewed!