Bishop Erik Varden, the Norwegian monk tasked with leading the Lenten spiritual exercises for the Roman Curia this year, began the reflections by encouraging those present to share the Gospel as a witness to peace, especially during a time “when the Gospel is sometimes deployed as a weapon in culture wars.”
In the reflection published Feb. 22 to his blog in both English and Italian, Bishop Varden said that Lent, a season of abstaining from the senses, brings people into a place, materially and symbolically, where the superficial has been removed.
“Fidelity to Christ’s example and commandments is the hallmark of Christian sincerity,” he continued. “The extent of the peace we embody — that signal peace ‘which the world cannot give’ — indicates Jesus’s abiding presence in us. We must insist on this now, when the Gospel is sometimes deployed as a weapon in culture wars.
“Instrumentalisations of Christian language and signs should be challenged, not just by wan outrage, but by teaching the terms of authentic spiritual warfare. For Christian peace is not a promise of ease; it is a condition for transformed society.”
He emphasized the radical call of the Christian to cultivate peace, recalling the words of Saint John Climacus, who warned that anger is the greatest roadblock to the presence of the Spirit.
“The Church instils our Lenten programme with peace,” Bishop Varden said, adding that the Church urges with a straightforward, clear call, rooted in peace, to defeat vices and evil passions.
The Church gives the faithful, “as we start each Lent’s battle, a peaceful melody as a seasonal soundtrack: a tract of great beauty that, for over a thousand years, the Church has sung on the First Sunday of Lent, to introduce the account of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness,” he said.
He recalled how Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached during Lent in 1139 on retaining peace while fighting temptation, sin, and evil.
The saint reflected “on what it means to live by grace as we fight evil, foster good, uphold truth, and follow the exodus path from unfreedom towards the land of promise, veering neither to the right nor to the left, remaining peaceful, conscious that underneath what may at times seem to us a tight-rope walk ‘are the everlasting arms,’” Bishop Varden concluded. “He summons us to loving and clear-headed discipleship.”