WEEK FIVE INTRODUCTION
CONTEMPLATING ASCETICISM: ITS TRAPS & TREASURES                                                    
March 22 - March 28
The word asceticism comes from the Greek “askesis” meaning  to exercise, train, or prepare. Asceticism involves living a frugal Christian lifestyle characterized by the renunciation of material possessions and sensual pleasures in order to pursue a godly life of spiritual transformation. Many Gospel personages practiced asceticism including John the Baptist, Jesus, the Disciples and the Apostle Paul. In fact, it could be argued that New Testament Christianity was based on ascetic ideals. Author Dallas Willard suggests this in his writings on the subject, “It is clear that ascetic practices were seriously engaged in by Jesus as well as by St. Paul. Both were upon occasion intensely involved, for long periods of time, with solitude, fasting, prayer, poverty and sacrificial service, and not because those conditions were unavoidable. It would seem, then, that those who would follow Christ, and follow Paul as he followed Christ (I Corinthians 11:1), must find in those practices an important part of what they should undertake as His disciples. Certainly this was so in the early centuries of the Christian era.”

This week we look both at the traps as well as the treasures of asceticism. Some of the treasures include: worship with fellow believers, vigilance, simplicity and guilelessness; and on the flipside with their connected vices: cowardice, fear, vainglory, pride, and blasphemous thoughts.

Day 26 - Sunday, March 22
Hymn of Supplication: Help us, Almighty God, to emulate Your great Cloud of Witnesses, preserve us from selfish and vain thoughts. Help us never to forget those that suffer, the downtrodden and the unfortunate. Be a hand for us, when in humility, we step aside for others. Keep us, for the sins of pride, vanity and lust are hard to battle and conquer, and only through You are they truly defeated. May we learn to love one another in You, O Christ, and may we strive for concord through You with those before us and around us.You are the Divine Architect Who shaped this vast universe and Whose power is limitless. We humbly beg You, forgive us our sins, for Your power is great and we are weak. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, always, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Scripture: Hebrews 12: 1-3
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Poetry: 
So Great a Cloud of Witnesses
by Christina Georgina Rossetti

I think of the saints I have known, and lift up mine eyes
To the far-away home of beautiful Paradise,
Where the song of saints gives voice to an undividing sea
On whose plain their feet stand firm while they keep their jubilee.
As the sound of waters their voice, as the sound of thunderings,
While they all at once rejoice, while all sing and while each one sings;
Where more saints flock in, and more, and yet more, and again yet more,
And not one turns back to depart thro' the open entrance-door.

O sights of our lovely earth, O sound of our earthly sea,
Speak to me of Paradise, of all blessed saints to me:
Or keep silence touching them, and speak to my heart alone
Of the Saint of saints, the King of kings, the Lamb on the Throne.

A SONG TO THE LAMB

The rain this morning had been swept from the sky and the sunlight glittered, but what struck me most was the song—bird after bird trilling, hallooing, warbling, cooing, a veritable jamboree, and a faint echo of the chorus of the saints that Rossetti’s poem invokes. She depicts the saints’ heavenly jubilee with images of surpassing fullness and depth. Their voices resound like mighty waters and thunderings, as if seas and sky were united in the song of the blessed. And like the thunder and mighty waters, waves upon waves of singers keep rolling into Paradise, which somehow still has room for more even while it is perfectly filled.

For Rossetti, though, that fulsome jubilee—from which none turns back—is still far off, and her own eyes and ears do in fact turn back again to “the lovely earth, and the earthly seas”. These don’t sing, but they can speak, as the birds did this morning. Yet it is the earth’s keeping silent about the heavenly song that opens a way to attend to something else, something that runs crosswise to jubilation and so provides the only firm foundation for joy. In that silence, we hear no echo of heaven, see no shadow of earthly fullness, but in the heart alone behold a mystery that brings together heaven and earth: a Passover Lamb on the throne of the King of kings.  For the song is only ever to this Lamb who was slain and yet who conquered, the Lamb for whom suffering, shame, and death were the path to victory and exultation.

For Rossetti, the heart’s solitude and silence helped fix her attention on the Lamb on the throne, yet in these days of social distancing and isolation, how we long for a company!  John August Swanson’s Procession is more like what I want: folks streaming from a vast cathedral with song, music, banners, a cloud of witnesses surrounded by and bearing the witness of the Scriptures and of Christian history, wave upon wave of earthly echoes of the heavenly song. Unlike the metaphor of the race to be run in Hebrews 12, this is an image not of the endurance of suffering, but of provision. It declares that we are a provided-for people moving out to the world. Across the top are three large panels depicting divine provision to human gatherings mediated by Jesus: the loaves and the fishes, the great catch, the Last Supper. Yet, we must remember that neither the provision nor the company is what gives us fullness; rather the fullness of Jesus is what gives us the company and provides what we need.

Like Rossetti, Swanson is mindful that we be drawn to the right center. Notice the vast nave that dominates the image is in fact well off center. The bright blue circular window with the orange center at the rear of the nave echoes the swirl of blues in the images around the orange nave itself. The true geometric center of the image is not the window, but the circular banner—blue around orange again—of Jesus’s baptism with the disciples looking on as the Spirit testifies along with John. As the adjacent image of the wedding at Cana indicates, this is the Gospel of John’s account of the baptism, which focuses on the testimony of the Spirit to John and John’s testimony to the disciples: “Behold, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world!”

This Lamb is both provider and provision, fulsome in both suffering and joy, founder and perfecter, forerunner in the race and the one to whom the company of runners look. Rich or poor, healthy or sick, alone at home or in company, you have a race to run, and you can only endure by means of the Lamb’s provision and not your own.

Prayer:
O Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world,
may I run the race before me with what You alone can provide.

Diane Vincent
Associate Professor 
Torrey Honors Institute
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab. To learn more about the themes of this year’s Lent Project, please go to: https://ccca.biola.edu/lent/2020/#day-feb-25