“We–or at least I–shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found him so, not have “tasted and seen.”
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.”
C.S. Lewis in Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer (Orlando: Harcourt, 1963) 91.
To adore God is to exalt Him in the highest while humbling ourselves to the lowest. That is our posture on Ash Wednesday: humble repentance. It’s the posture called for in the heart of the Lord’s Prayer. Father in Heaven, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us” (Matthew 6:12).
While the observance of Lent is optional, the three disciplines practiced in Lent are not. Thankfully in Matthew 6 (among other texts), the instructions of Jesus are clear. “When you give alms…when you pray…when you fast…” In our Lenten journey we will explore these texts and thoughts from saints through the centuries on them.
For now, let’s start with adoration and repentance. This is the first step to learning new habits linked to giving, prayer, and fasting. My prayer is that we will see “patches of Godlight” together. And I hope you like the new “Daily Meditations” image. It’s from the woods at Trinity College Bristol, UK, a place I’ve seen “patches of Godlight” many times.