Entering the Bright Sadness

The Russian Orthodox writer Fr Alexander Schmemann describes the nature of our Lenten pilgrimage as ‘bright sadness’. Because I am drawn by the reference to light, this has become my favorite image for Lent.  The term also fits so well with the artistic beauty of religious icons, which are central to the devotional practices of our Eastern Christian brothers and sisters.  A 'bright sadness' well describes both the imagery of iconography and the atmosphere that suffuses the Lenten experience.

Throughout Lent we fast, pray and practice devotions as a means to breathe in this atmosphere of bright sadness. Schmemann wrote in his Great Lent: Journey to Pascha

Little by little, we begin to understand, or rather to feel, that this sadness is indeed “bright,” that a mysterious transformation is about to take place in us. It is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access – a place where they have no power. All that which seemed so tremendously important to us as to fill our mind, that state of anxiety which has virtually become our second nature, disappear somewhere and we begin to feel free, light and happy. It is not the noisy and the superficial happiness which comes and goes twenty times a day and is so fragile and fugitive; it is a deep happiness which comes not from a single and particular reason but from our soul having, in the words of Dostoevsky, touched “another world.” And that which it has touched is made up of light and peace and joy, of an inexpressible trust.

Ash Wednesday we receive both the mark of sadness — the cross in ash on our foreheads — and the mark of brightness — the great joy of being received at the table of our Lord. Even as we acknowledge brokeness, pain, sin, death and betrayal we celebrate the transforming power of God who illuminates every experience with the radiance of divine love.  My prayer is that we will all be touched by the light of Christ which brings peace, joy, and an inexpressible trust.

Click the link below to hear a final alleluia from the Serbian Orthodox liturgy before we enter into Lent.  At UniPlace, the children helped during children's sermon this Sunday to "put away the alleluia"