“The Rhetoric of Lent” (Cultural commentary and critique by CCSN Guest Columnist/Blogger, Mark Williams, California State Univ., Sacramento).
This article, by Timothy O’Malley, in Church Life Journal stresses the ways we can, so to speak, misread the text of Lent. We do that by using the scripts and signs of this season as a springboard of self-expression or even self-discipline (with an eye, of course, toward self-improvement). None of these goals are inherently flawed, of course, but the deeper Lent is the one where we are not writing an expression of self, but being written upon by the Word who is so silent and so much in pain during this season. It is the surrender of self to God’s suffering, not the project of selfdom, that is signified by the ashes of Lent. Read them and weep, as they say.