Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey

By Emilie Griffin

“Griffin is a trustworthy guide . . . She writes with the unmistakable authenticity and authority of a woman steeped in prayer.” – America

Join Emilie Griffin in this daily companion for the Lenten journey. Using ancient and modern texts as inspiration for her own reflections, Emilie Griffin nurtures and guides us into a deeper knowledge of ourselves and God. We discover that Lent is our chance for a fresh start, and an opportunity to joyfully put ourselves in God’s hands.

Lent is a time when we deepen our faith in a journey not of grand gestures but of small surrenders. We are converted not only once in our lives but many times, and the conversion is little by little and often imperceptible. But Lent gives us a time to move the process along, intentionally, by a series of small surrenders. When we choose some exercise for Lent–daily worship, daily prayer, abstinence from one thing or another, it is not so much the practice that transforms us, but it is our willingness to change. —from Small Surrenders

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781612615530

Emilie Griffin

Emilie Griffin is an award-winning playwright and the author of a number of books including Wonderful and Dark Is This Road and Doors into Prayer: An Invitation. Emilie is on the board and speaking team of Renovaré. She and her husband, William, are founding members of the Chrysostom Society, a national group for writers of the Christian faith.

Book preview

A Word About Lent

LENT IN SOME SENSE IS A PLUNGE INTO A THICKET, a sustained time in a wilderness place. But few of us can put aside forty days—or forty-seven days—as a time of full retreat. Instead, we visit the wilderness without leaving our daily lives. We spend an intentional time with Jesus, entering his wilderness, walking with him, and finally, sharing his Passion. Lent is a time when we deepen our faith in a journey not of grand gestures but of small surrenders.

This book is meant to be a daily companion for the Lenten journey. Here you will find a series of reflections, one for each of the forty weekdays of Lent, the Sundays of Lent, the Easter Triduum—those three days leading up to Easter—and Easter Sunday itself.

Since the dates of Lent and Easter vary from year to year, each selection is not for a calendar date but for a day in the Lenten season. Each meditation flows from a brief quotation on some aspect of the spiritual life. A few of these are biblical. Most are from spiritual writers and guides.

As part of your daily Lenten observance, I hope you will also read and pray the Scriptures appointed in the liturgical calendar for each day of Lent. These biblical citations (which are read aloud daily in liturgical churches) appear in three different cycles, years A, B, and C. The readings change each year, and will be repeated only every fourth year. These are the readings heard in church throughout Lent. They may also be consulted for private prayer and reflection.

These liturgical readings are found in the Roman Catholic and Anglican lectionaries, in the Common Lectionary, and on the Internet.

Externally, Lent is a time of doing without. It is a time of self-denial, a penitential time, a time of repentance. But inwardly, Lent is a time of drawing closer to Jesus. The idea is to go with Jesus into the desert and journey with him there during his times of trial. Not for one day, but for an extended time: a biblical forty days.

We begin this forty-day journey by remembering when Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. In fact, the Spirit drove him there. Now our task is to imitate Christ in his journey, to walk with him, to let the Spirit drive us into a desert place where Satan may confront us.

Lent is about turning: repentance and transformation. Yet we who come as practicing believers may feel that our days of conversion are already behind us. We are like the poet T.S. Eliot, who says in his poem Ash Wednesday that he does not want to turn again. To make a second or third conversion may be daunting to us. We wonder what demands the Lord will make of us during this Lenten time.

Why should we be converted again, we wonder. Aren’t we Christ’s people already? We are already trying to follow Jesus every day. What more is asked, then, during Lent? And why these days, these forty days?

The Church in her wisdom calls us to a special time of intentionality, still another time of repentance. Weary as we are, exhausted from the burdens of living, we must turn and be converted once again. Repentance is not a one-time thing.

T.S. Eliot speaks to my heart when he says Ash Wednesday is like climbing a staircase. We step upward slowly, prayerfully, sorry for all the ways we have gone wrong, the ways we have fallen short. We want to go up, though we’re not sure where we’re going, and we’re rather afraid to look down.

We pray to God to have mercy on us. This is not breast-beating, but the ancient words of repentance may still reside in our memory: Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa—through my own fault, my own most grievous fault. Such words don’t spring to our lips as they once did. Not now in the twenty-first century. We speak with a new vocabulary, the new small talk. The old phrase ashes to ashes and dust to dust seems a bit self-conscious, stagey. Does any of this self-denial fit with our new assertiveness, our cocky self-esteem? Yet on some level we know what flawed people we are. And if we have forgotten, Lent reminds us.

Been to church? I see you got your ashes. Dust we are, to dust we shall return.

We find depth and meaning to this ritual of ashes: it is our day of departure. We are taking an inward journey, climbing with Christ along a tricky staircase, where the angle of vision continually shifts. Once again we submit to the ancient rod of discipline. God has called us to be learners, disciples, a people in training, our hearts open to change.

Lord, we want to follow you, but how will we know the way?

The forty days of Lent are counted as weekdays, Monday through Saturday. Though the Sundays are technically outside of Lent, most Lenten observance continues through the Sundays as well. In Roman Catholic and Anglican masses, purple vestments are worn on most days of Lent. The fourth Sunday of Lent has long been celebrated as Laetare Sunday, a day of encouragement (literally, happy Sunday) when we look forward to Easter, two weeks away.

Today, many Protestant Christian churches are practicing Lenten observance. Even those churches that have no denominational affiliation may plan and observe Ash Wednesday as a day of repentance, and continue a special sense of spiritual dedication throughout the Lenten season. This is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work.

In earlier centuries, many Christians took on severe penances and forms of self-denial. Today’s Lent is gentler and less heroic in style. The following meditations develop the theme of small surrenders, ways that we may gently open ourselves up to the grace of God.

There is no question that Lent offers an opportunity for change and transformation, especially if we join our hearts to the Lord’s in the Lenten journey. As you reflect on these daily readings, I hope you will be led to experience the grace of Lent and to make your own small surrenders.

Ash Wednesday Through

the First Week of Lent

Ash Wednesday

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Friday after Ash Wednesday

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

First Sunday in Lent

Monday of the First Week

Tuesday of the First Week

Wednesday of the First Week

Thursday of the First Week

Friday of the First Week

Saturday of the First Week

Ash Wednesday

We are not converted only once in our lives but many times, and this endless series of large and small conversions, inner revolutions, leads to our transformation in Christ.

—Thomas Merton

WHAT ARE YOU GIVING UP FOR LENT?" This long-established custom of giving up treats, chocolates, caffeinated or sugary beverages, alcohol, or tobacco is perhaps the way we most often think of Lenten discipline. And it makes good conversation in casual situations. But we know it is surface stuff. Choosing to give up something good for something a bit less is a play-it-safe strategy. Something tells us there is more to spiritual transformation than this. We suspect that playing it safe is not what Christ lived and died for.

Thomas Merton’s view, that we must undergo a series of large and small inner revolutions, is a truer picture of Christian transformation. When we choose some exercise for Lent, daily worship, daily prayer, abstinence from one thing or another, it is not so much the practice that transforms us. It is our willingness to change. And Merton says the process is endless. It’s not about getting there, it’s about being on the way.

Lent is our chance for a fresh start, a new page. We consciously let down our defenses against the grace of God. We admit to ourselves our need for improvement. We notice how hopeless we are. We tell God we’re doing our best but we wish we could do better. We put ourselves in God’s hands.

That is what Jesus does when he goes into the desert. He puts himself completely in God’s hands. In Matthew’s Gospel we read: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. (My first thought: don’t try this at home.) By exposing himself to hunger Jesus opens himself up to assaults from the Devil. But he isn’t just performing daredevil stunts. He makes a deliberate surrender of the will, a spiritual exercise. Jesus is placing himself in the Father’s hands.

The time Jesus spends in the wilderness is a time of preparation. It is a kind of training. Jesus has a larger mission to fulfill, a ministry, a life’s work. He is preparing himself for a larger call. When we go into the wilderness with Jesus our motive is similar, surrendering ourselves as a kind of preparation.

But how can we compare our little Lents to the walk Jesus takes in the wilderness? Of course the gap is huge between our holiness and his. We can hardly say our own names in his presence. But Jesus doesn’t notice this gap, or he seems to overlook it.

The huge divide between our lives and his is a gap he is constantly closing. He wants us to come into the wilderness with him, if only just to observe at first. Watch how I do this, he seems to be saying. Notice these steps, this maneuver. Practice, he is telling us. Practice, and you’ll improve, without even knowing it. Practice.

One thing we can learn from Jesus in the desert is to fortify ourselves with God’s word. When the Devil tries to goad him into turning stones to bread, as a kind of power play, Jesus answers with words from Deuteronomy, Scriptures he knows by heart: It is written, One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. The Devil wants him to break his fast. More important, he wants to weaken Jesus’ allegiance.

What can we learn from just this little visit with Jesus in the wilderness? From watching him resist the Evil One?

We know, by watching Jesus, that emptiness is the beginning of holiness.

We know that we are blessed when we hunger and thirst for righteousness. We know we will be filled.

We walk with Jesus to be purified. We walk with him to be fortified. Nourished by sacrament and word, we walk through desert places more easily. We learn to deal with our own gaps, our lapses. We find that we can tolerate our hunger and our thirst.

We are converted not only once in our lives but many times. And the conversion is little by little. Sometimes it is as imperceptible as grass growing. But Lent gives us a time to move the process along. Intentionally. By small surrenders.

Merton says we may have the generosity to undergo one or two such upheavals, (but) we cannot face the necessity of further and greater rendings of our inner self. . . .

Merton says we cannot. But I think he knows we can. That is how our holiness grows, by small surrenders, without which we cannot finally become free.

Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Our prayer, our fasting and our almsgiving is to be done before God and not for the approval of one another—although we can give and gain support from each other in our Lenten efforts. So at home, in school, in whatever company you keep, encourage each other to mark this Lent well.

—Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham, England

THE SECOND DAY BEGINS TO TEACH US that Lent is a sustained experience: a true commitment to discipline. Let’s go back to the question of Jesus in the desert. A one-day fast seems simple enough. But keeping a fast for forty days? It’s like keeping a promise for forty days. A fast of many days can seem like a lifetime.

Still, there’s a great beauty in these forty days, since we are walking toward the light. Over this sustained Lenten time the seasons will turn. Those who live in the Northern Hemisphere will move into springtime and resurrection; those who live in the Southern Hemisphere will move into autumn—and resurrection. But