FIRST DAYS OF LENT

ASH WEDNESDAY: THE INNER ROOM

"But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."

— Matthew 6:6 NASB

A certain brother went to Abbot Moses in Scete and asked him for a good word. And the elder said to him: Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.

— Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

In the King James Bible, the "inner room" verse of Matthew 6 reads: "When thou prayest, enter thy closet." The Greek word tameion means "storage room" — a humble, quiet room with a few buckets and crates but probably no beautiful view or easy place to sit. Finding a place to be in the presence of God doesn't require much, Jesus seems to say. He is teaching, first, that prayer isn't a public performance or a way of showing others we're religious; at the same time, he wants us to realize the opposite — that prayer is a way to know God in a private and personal way. The inner room he mentions may not be a place in your physical home so much as inside yourself.

What is the inner room of the soul like? Catherine of Siena spoke of keeping a hermitage inside her heart. Francis of Assisi said, "Brother Body is our cell, and the soul is the hermit who remains inside the cell to pray to God and meditate." Teresa of Avila wrote a book about prayer, The Interior Castle, named after the intricate extended metaphor she used to describe the soul. You can think of the inner room of your soul as a cozy house, a simple cell, or a "vast, spacious, and plentiful" place. However you may like to imagine it, there's a place inside you where God is waiting to sit with you.

Abba Moses, also called Moses the Black, was a fourth-century desert father from Ethiopia who was a thief before he was a monk. He taught his monks that "your cell will teach you everything," as Merton quotes above, and he meant both the physical cell where a hermit was living (a cave or hut) and the inner, spiritual cell of solitude. Solitude invites us to sit not only in the presence of God but also with ourselves. There's no better way to get to know someone than to sit in a car with them for a while. The same is true of God and the self. It's not always easy to sit still with yourself or with God, especially for extended periods of time; but like a child resting in a parent's lap, sometimes just to sit together is enough.

Contemplation and solitude go together. Thomas Merton described it as "life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being." This Lent, like many saints, hermits, prophets, and rebels before you, you're going to spend some intentional time in solitude and, I hope, get to know God's love more deeply and enter more fully into Jesus' Passion and Resurrection by doing so.

Questions for Reflection

1. What image do you prefer for the inner room of the soul: cell, closet, hermitage, or castle? Why? Is there a term you do not like? Why?

2. Have you ever thought of Lent as a contemplative season before? What about Lent, specifically, could be called contemplative?

3. What made you pick up this book? What do you hope to gain from using it for Lent this year?

Choose a Practice for This Week

— Observe the ancient tradition of fasting on Ash Wednesday. Skip either lunch or dinner. Sip tea or water to ease hunger pains. Use those twinges as a call to prayer and to "remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

— Find twenty to thirty minutes of quiet solitude. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide and speak to you through drawing. Draw either your inner room or your "interior castle." If you have time, or at another time this week, draw your "wilderness" as it feels at this season of your life. If you would prefer, you can describe these things with words instead of drawing.

THURSDAY: THE WILDERNESS

He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts.

— Mark 1:13

And I say, "O that I had wings like a dove! I would fly away and be at rest; truly, I would flee far away; I would lodge in the wilderness.

— Psalm 55:6–8

We must cross the desert and spend some time in it to receive the grace of God as we should. It is there that one empties oneself, that one drive away from oneself everything that is not God and that one empties completely the small house of one's soul so as to leave all the room free for God alone. ... It is indispensable: the...