Erik Varden in Lent

Source: Erik Varden’s website at Coram Fratibus

In last week’s repost, we looked at a section from his groundbreaking book The Shattering of Loneliness. Since then, he has released another, Entering the Twofold Mystery, and more will follow once I have had the chance to read it. I have also learned that he is going to be a speaker at Communion and Liberation’s New York Encounter this year, and I am sorry that I will be unable to be there.

However, The Pillar did a rather extensive interview with Bishop Varden on Lent, one that, without ignoring some grim realities, also pivoted our attention to the hopeful, creative and positive realities that come with Lent and its ascetic practices, and it demonstrated once again his ability to be both intellectually profound and utterly pragmatic.

Below are just a few fragments of his responses to Luke Coppen, but it is worth reading the whole interview.

40 Days

40 days aren’t just a time during which we have to grit our teeth in order to arrive at our destination. But it’s a time during which the Lord would do something with us and in us, and that’s why it’s such a precious time.

The Reality of Death

I think it’s true to say that our Western culture is profoundly mendacious when it comes to death. We keep pretending that it doesn’t exist. And we do everything not to look it in the eye. And there is the Church, our Mother, telling us: Look, this is just the way it is. You know it’s the way it is. Face up to it. Face up to the fact that you are not God. Face up to the fact that you are a contingent being and that one day this life will cease. But face up also to that voice in your heart which speaks the truth, which tells you that death can’t be the end. Because that, of course, is what the Church goes on to say: well, of course it isn’t the end.

Identity in Easter

Easter is at the heart of Christian existence. It’s Easter, if you like, that defines the Christian condition. And Easter is the assurance that life eternal is restored to us. It’s a real possibility. Easter is the assurance that all the things that condition our lives negatively ⁠— sin, disease, enmity, hatred, warfare, mortality ⁠— all those things have been overcome, and can still be overcome, insofar as we conduct our lives in Christ and let ourselves be formed by Christian hope.

Ascetic Practice in Lent

There’s also a generous desire in very many people to want to give something extra as a way of manifesting their seriousness and their love. And I see that as a very positive thing, as long as it doesn’t just become a self-realization trip and an occasion to manifest the triumph of the self-will, because the whole point of Lent and of Christian fasting is to show the limitations of self-will, to free us from imprisonment in self-will and not to systematize it and glorify it.

Fasting and Dieting

Dieting has me as agent and focus, and my desire to emerge from the diet and be able to put on clothes that I could put on three years ago. Whereas fasting has its object outside myself. I deprive myself of food or some kind of enjoyment, whatever it is. It’s an ecstatic practice in the strict sense of that word: It helps me to step outside myself and toward the other, and to grow in attentiveness. Dieting, I think, can sometimes be doing the opposite and make us excessively focused on ourselves.

Praying with the Church in Lent

The first thing would be to follow the Church’s liturgy. Just reading the Collects for Lent is a marvelous exercise. We simply don’t realize what a treasure we have in that great collection of prayers. Taking the Collect for each day, reading it slowly, and analyzing it to make sure I really understand what it says — because those are very, very dense texts — then trying to apply it to my life. That would be an excellent way of praying in Lent.

You can read the whole interview here, and thanks is due to The Pillar for putting this interview together. I subscribe to the Pillar and am richly rewarded with the insights of both JD Flynn and Ed Condon on their posts and podcasts, and I highly recommend you do so as well.

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