Many Christians worldwide are now preparing to observe the Season of Lent, beginning next week with Ash Wednesday and culminating in Holy Week, the days marking the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem and the events concluding with the triduum, that is Good Friday to Easter Sunday, the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus as Christ. This journey focuses on the great Christian themes of penitence, redemption, and atonement, and the rites of various Christian traditions provide the “pegs” as we move through this 40-day-plus journey.
In recent years my attention has been drawn to a parallel journey hidden deep within the Christian tradition beginning a few days before Lent and culminating at Pentecost, some fifty days beyond Easter celebrations. It is called “the Great Hundred Days,” commencing with the Feast of Transfiguration (this Sunday) and ending with the Feast of Pentecost. I am grateful to friend and author Alexander John Shaia for awakening me to this awareness.
Whereas Lent is marked by fasting, this journey is marked by feasting!
Its emphasis is on theosis, carried more familiarly to those in my tradition as the doctrines of sanctification or unification. While embracing the events of the better-known Lenten journey, its emphasis is on claiming through the Christ story the process of being transformed into the original blessedness of humanity being created in the image of God and, through Christ’s work, being enabled to work towards completing that image.
Both Lent and the Hundred Days help us enact the redemptive work of Christ in our living and in Creation.
When entering Lenten celebrations, I would usually remind congregations that we enter the season, not in defeat, but as an Easter people in whom the Easter story is already at work by God’s generous outpouring of beneficence and love. We are tempted to want to try to earn redemption through self-denial and self-negation, hence another phrase of mine, “Don’t ask yourself what you’re going to give up for Lent, ask yourself what you’re prepared to take on!” A Great Hundred Days orientation seems to reset the course.
I am reminded of the two prisoners looking out – one saw mud, the other stars. Perhaps the two journeys that are about to commence remind me of how those two prisoners that are sometimes within me jostle for perspective.
Wondering Pilgrim 