The Environment For Lenten Worship

Thinking about the environment for worship requires delving into the meaning of Lent. The following article explains the meaning of Lent and draws out implications for how the visual arts may be used to complement Lenten worship.

Lent is a season of simplicity, a time to strip away the false and to expose the truth. Things need to be torn apart and turned inside out. How else can the wind and sun cleanse a winter's worth of rot? Throughout the year hospitality demands that a church be clean and free from clutter—including the mess that sometimes surrounds the bulletin boards, music racks, lost-and-found cabinets, and crying rooms. But Lent requires something more than tidiness. There should be a genuine austerity, a plainness that communicates a season when we get back to basics. We try to make more evident what is important about these forty days: the assembly, the penitents, the elect, the candidates. Simplifying There are many ways to simplify the worship environment: Use vesture that is textured, unadorned, in dark violets, grays, and earth tones. Cover the lectionary or book of the gospels with this material. Don't add appliqué such as passion symbols: These turn vestments into billboards. Candles can be lit and a cloth put on the altar only from the preparation of the altar until Communion. Use unbleached candles and unbleached cloth. Remove statues, crosses, and other art from the building. Opaque fabric panels can cover unremovable art and possibly even some windows. Use plain earthenware instead of metals or glass. Remove plants and flowers. Remove last year's paschal candle from the baptistery. A simplified worship place may be able to sustain a few elements—as decoration—to bring out the unique character of Lent. Here's a brief overview of certain Lenten images, with possibilities for translating this imagery into the worship place. Holy Spring The paschal season—Lent, triduum, and Eastertime—is the springtime of the church. And spring takes many forms, from an orchard full of blossoms and butterflies to a flooding river engorged with mud and drowned animals. If Easter is the church's Maytime, Lent is its mudtime, a season of blizzards in the north and tornadoes in the south. Lent may mean "spring," but it's a threatening, blustery, life-and-death sort of season. There's good reason March was named after the god of war. Be judicious about using signs of spring during Lent. Bear in mind spring's dangerous—and muddy—alter ego. It's almost in deference to this deadly side of spring that the church traditionally forbids the use of flowers during Lent. Maybe let just a single daffodil each week or a sprig of pussywillow or a bowl of crocus offer a small foretaste of Eastertime's abundance. Lent, triduum, and Eastertime are planned as a whole. The worship environments of these seasons relate to and complement each other. If Eastertime is like an orchard, a garden, or a pasture, Lent is like a wasteland or a barren desert. If Eastertime is a homecoming banquet, Lent is the fasting of a long journey home. If Eastertime is a honeymoon, Lent is an anxious courtship. During the triduum the holy font is filled with water, and chrism is welcomed as one of the "Easter gifts" of the bishop. It makes sense to keep the font dry during Lent and the ambry emptied of chrism. During Eastertime, let the font babble with water and chrism impart its fragrance throughout the room—with perhaps the punch of an added oil-based scent. During the triduum the wood of the holy cross is planted in the midst of the assembly as a tree of life. During Eastertime that cross might be surrounded by flowers and lights. Psalm 137, "By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept," is a Lenten song of exile. We hang our alleluias—our harps—on the willows. "For how can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?" Weeping willows set up in the worship space, hung with simple harps, are an emblem of Lent worth returning to year after year. Willows and poplars are found in just about every nation and climate. Like the catechumens, they are thirsty for water. It is no mystery why willows are a favorite Palm Sunday branch: They are one of the first plants to bud in the spring. The custom of veiling statues—certainly the most ambitious alteration of the worship environment in years past—is a strong symbol of exile. After all, the word sin means "separation," and it is sin that drove us from paradise. In this land of our exile, death denies us the company of our ancestors, the saints. A veil separates us from the vision of heaven, a vision that sacred images are meant to anticipate. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Lent is a memento mori, a reminder of death. That is the meaning of "mortification." The three pillars of Lenten mortification are the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and these disciplines need both practical and symbolic attention. In the vestibule or gathering area, make available any parish take-home materials. Advertise special Lenten prayer services here. The well-stocked church library or bookstands deserve prominence at this season. Set up a hamper for receiving donations to charity. Include literature or signs that describe whatever was agreed upon as the focus of parishwide fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. This takes an eye for attractiveness of both design and function. The whole area is to express how the parish keeps Lent and is to draw thoughtful attention before and after worship. This area is a good place to display a clay bowl of ashes, or perhaps images of the desert, or of journeys, or other small-scale Lenten images that would not be as appropriate in the worship area itself. As a final suggestion, advertise the season to the neighborhood by hanging something outside the church building. Even more effective than within the building, strips of fabrics outside, perhaps in a monochromatic arrangement of purples, would be a simple way to announce that this community is preparing the Passover.