Once again we begin our Lenten journey, following Christ throughout these next forty days in spiritual preparation for the great celebration of the resurrection at Easter. Lent, and its culmination in the Easter celebration, are essential reminders for us that everything we have—and all that we are in this world—is moving towards something far beyond this world.
The Christian tradition has always understood the believer’s existence as a status viatoris, a way of being that is necessarily defined as being “on-the-way” towards something else. Importantly, this status viatoris is not only the physical reality that we are fundamentally oriented toward heaven, but also a spiritual reality that relates to the “state” of our souls. We are not yet the spiritual persons God has created and intended, but instead we are constantly “on-the-way” to the holiness, freedom and joy that God desires. The fictional characters in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, even after they reach heaven, are ever journeying “further up and further in.”
Lent should be the time par excellence that our hearts are reignited with the fire of God’s love, and our spiritual memories are rekindled to orient our entire existence towards the being “on-the-way” to a greater, more noble way of life. Our journey of Lent, and of life, starts now. Where it will end we cannot even begin to imagine (see Ephesians 3:20).
