First Sunday of Lent
For Lent 2021, members of CTA’s Anti-Racism Team are sharing weekly reflections. As they are published, their pieces will be posted here.
As we live into the Lenten season, a solemn time in our liturgical calendar and lives, I share my struggles with understanding and commemorating this time of the year. Growing up in a Latinx household, Lent was a time of sacrifice, reflecting on our sins and forgiveness, and giving thanks for the ultimate sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The bloodier the cross, the holier… the more pain our repentance caused, the holier… the more shame-based gratitude we experienced and felt, the holier. It was a time when our suffering and the suffering of Christ became one, a becoming one that redeemed us.
For a long time I embraced these messages, using this time of the year to fast, mortify my body, offer penance, and find new ways to beat myself up emotionally, spiritually, and even physically; I deserved pain because my sins led Jesus to the cross and despite all my efforts I would never be good enough. To be honest, it was not until recently that I have found the courage to question these teachings and recognize that they are not spiritually healthy. On one level, though we need to recognize the struggle and redemptive love of the cross, we need to hold this in harmonious tension with the resurrection. I think we too frequently focus on hardship, pain, doubt, and sin overshadowing possibility, hope, resurrection, and ongoing creation. It is not about forgetting pain and sacrifice but ensuring that we live into the wowness sparked by Jesus calling us by name like he did with Mary Magdalene.
I also began to realize that in focusing on how my sins beat, scourged, broke, and nailed Jesus to the cross, I internalized that I was not good enough—a dynamic reinforced by the church and by society that I was a second class citizen for being a queer and trans Latinx person who lives with mental health issues. I deserved to feel shame, I deserved to be mistreated, I deserved to feel guilt for the cross while also not being worthy of the love embodied on the cross and in the resurrection. It is not until now that I realize the selfishness underneath this dynamic and the traumatic ripplings of this type of theology.
Though perhaps it is a little warped, I have come to a place where I am trying to live into with fierceness that I am good enough as I am and do not need to punish myself due to unhealthy religious coercion. I have my issues, blunders, quirks, and areas of growth, but I am no less of a person and no less loved by an itinerant Jewish rabbi who widened the circle through his life, death, and resurrection. There are things I need to address in my life to be healthier emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Lent is not a time to bash ourselves for our shortcomings but is a time to reflect on how we are loved, how we need to grow in our expressing love, and the need to explore trauma-informed theologies that hold both hardship and celebration together. This Lent, I challenge myself and I challenge you to reflect on the love expressed on the cross and the love expressed in the rolling away of the tomb’s stone. I invite us all to reflect that our areas of growth are not sins to be redeemed or to mortify our bodies and spirits over. Who we are and who we are becoming are worthy of the love that Jesus embodied on the cross and the love that he lived into at and after the resurrection. Yes, we need to be critical of ourselves but not cruel; we need to be grateful as we focus on redemption while also focusing on how we redeem ourselves by being gentle with ourselves and ultimately loving ourselves as Jesus did and does. Lent is a time to reflect on how Jesus loved and loves us as we are; reminding ourselves that we are worthy of that love as we are; and that we are good enough.
