Lenten Meditations

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One source for my Lenten meditations this year is John Donne’s Holy Sonnets.

Donne’s life story makes fascinating reading. Born Catholic in 17th-century England, he studied at both Oxford and Cambridge, but didn’t take a degree because he would have had to join the Anglican Church to do so. He wrote poetry, served in the navy, and secretly married the 16-year-old niece of a noblewoman. When the marriage was discovered, his father-in-law disapproved so strongly that he had Donne imprisoned for a short time. He also refused to provide a dowry, so the couple lived in financial straits. The poet summed up his situation in five words: John Donne – Anne Donne – Undone.

Despite that sentiment, the couple went on to have 12 children; to make ends meet they depended upon the charity of their friends and patrons. When the king declared that the only job Donne could get was within the Anglican Church, the poet converted to Anglicanism, reluctantly became a priest, and was named the king’s chaplain. After Anne Donne died in childbirth at the age of 33, John Donne was named Dean of St. Paul’s.

At some point I want to read his homilies, because he was known as a riveting preacher, but at the moment I’m staying with the Holy Sonnets, which focus mainly on God, death and dying – appropriate topics for meditation during Lent.

Here’s an example from the first of the 19 sonnets, “Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?” Addressing the Creator, Donne feels caught between the despair caused by his sins and his impending death. If he looks toward God he can rise again, he said, “but our old subtle foe so tempteth me / That not one hour I can myself sustain.”

Four centuries after Donne penned these words, I feel a kinship with the man. I, too, feel that sin is causing me to waste away; if I fix my heart on God’s promises of forgiveness I feel hopeful of salvation, but like Donne I’m so tempted by the devil that I don’t think I can sustain being good for even one hour, so I have to plead with God to draw to him “mine iron heart.”

I wasn’t much impressed by Holy Sonnet II until I got to the last couple of lines, where the poet writes, “… Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, / And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.”  

Those few words are enough for a lifetime of meditations. Our Church teaches that God loves all mankind, even sinners like me, but sometimes with the poet I despair that the Creator would ever choose me. I don’t think I’m the worst of sinners, but when I consider my pettiness, my mean-heartedness, my selfishness – you get the picture – I wonder why God would ever choose me. But meditating on that leads me to John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Nothing in that verse says anything about being perfect, or about being sinless. The only requirement for salvation is that I believe.

If I believe, though, then I am called to follow in Christ’s footsteps, and so must love my neighbor as myself, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, comfort the sorrowful, forgive injuries, bear wrongs patiently, all of which I too often fail to do, which may well cause God not to choose to grant me the grace of salvation.

Then there is Satan, who may offer tempting things in this lifetime but certainly intends nothing good in eternity. Unlike God, the devil doesn’t love me, despite all that he proposes in an effort to keep me. Which leads to a profitable meditation: God offers heaven, while the devil promises hell. I need to work for the one while avoiding the other, and Lent is an excellent time to consider how to improve my efforts in these areas.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic. Reach her at marie@icatholic.org.