A long time ago, when I was a young man barely hearing the call to the priesthood, I was living in the mountains facing the Pacific Ocean. I joined a crew of dozens with rakes, shovels and buckets to clean up a stream. It was called a creek but it was different from the creeks of Minnesota. This small river came out of the mountains as the snow melted. It was swift, deep and cold. The creek winded its way through a broad valley before joining another river on its way to the ocean.
Many decades had passed since salmon had spawned in its pools. With an abundance of creeks and rivers in the region, a previous generation had used this particular creek as a dump. Tires, rusted cans of all shapes and sizes, and cast-iron parts from broken farm machinery were dumped into the creek. The garbage allowed the silt to build up, and while the creek still sparkled for picture-taking tourists, it had little oxygen and little life.
Father Charles Lachowitzer
As a large crew, we each took a section and began to dredge the bottom. All the human garbage along with the submerged tree branches and leaf debris were all hauled out. For the bigger stuff that was unable to be moved with rakes and shovels, like the entire bumper of an old truck, heavy equipment had to be used that included a power winch with a strong metal cable.
I remember standing on a ridge looking down into that valley. That once bucolic creek was now a ribbon of chocolate colored mud. It looked far worse than before. But the water was flowing and carried away all that built up dirt. It was not long before the waters cleared up, revealing a rock and gravel bottom covered with oxygen bubbles rising to the surface. The creek would later be stocked with newly hatched salmon, since none of the salmon in the ocean would have any memory of that creek. But because of the dredging, the creek was healthy and would become another nursery for thousands of salmon for many years to come.
This experience taught me that dredging is a good way to look at the Lenten season. Through a good examination of conscience and going to confession, through prayer and intentional fasting, through almsgiving and a greater attentiveness to good works, Lent is more of a dredge than just a drudge to get through.
The preparatory season of Advent is muted by the coinciding holiday celebrations with lights, music and festive gatherings. Lent, by dramatic contrast, is in the middle of a calendar desert. The weeks of winter wear on, with vacation in some distant summer. The beautiful snow of December is now getting old. It takes effort to endure the late February and early March blizzards. Perhaps this adds to the feeling that Lent is a joyless season. All desert and no water. All sin and the cold darkness within.
Lent is anything but a joyless season. There isn’t much out there to distract us from a variety of spiritual exercises that will indeed, by the grace of God, bear much fruit. The Lenten Scripture readings are some of the richest imagery in the entire year. Lent can be an eager anticipation of the greatest joy ever known in the Easter season. For at each Mass in the Lenten season, we already encounter the person and real presence of the risen Christ.
Lent as a dredge recognizes that we do build up all the disappointments of a less than perfect life. There are all the little sins that may not make it to the confessional but do, nonetheless, silt up and over time, interfere with our spiritual joy. All of our Lenten disciplines can be seen as a shovel, rake and bucket to clean up the interior channels of grace. Yes, it can muddy the waters a bit. But we already know in faith that the lifeless waters of Good Friday will be transformed into the life-giving waters of Easter.
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