The Great Lent: The Tithe of the Year

The Great Lent The Tithe of the Year

Severance is a brand new psychological drama television series from Apple TV. I have only watched a single episode so far, but I can tell you that it is my kind of a show. It is slow and calm, minimalistic and monotone, a type of show where a character might look out of the window for 3-4 minutes, during which time nothing is said, and nothing happens. I am sure some might find it boring, but I enjoy the serenity and silence tacked into scenes and transitions. It is about a company that experiments with surgically and permanently separates their employees’ work and personal lives’ memories and identities. So people who undergo this procedure have no recollection and consciousness of their personal life and identity when they are at work. Once they leave the premises at 5:15 pm, they have zero memories of the people they work with or even what they do at the company.

We might rightly question and argue against such a radical and inhuman intervention and approach. But it also raises a valid question about the cluttered and fragmented state of our minds and the need to separate and prioritize what really matters for happiness, relationships and spiritual life. The challenges and struggles of modern life pressure and pull us towards million directions and the never-ceasing flow of information fragments our attention and ability to focus. Despite our desire and realization that spiritual life is important, it is sometimes impossible to pause or even slow down this hectic pace of our lives and find space and time for prayer, reflection, and reading the Holy Bible.

In its infinite wisdom realizing this, the Church set aside a very special period during the year, carefully designed and designated to realign and heal our spiritual well-being. In the Old Testament, there was a tradition and teaching about tithing. God rightly was considered to be the source of every blessing in human life, and everyone was required to donate ten percent of their income back to God. If you carefully compare that to the forty days of the Great Lent, you will notice that it is about ten percent of the year. Ten percent of our precious time that the Church exhorts and invites us to give back to God. But it is important not to stop here but to reflect that God has no needs and there is nothing we really give him that He does not already have, and the Great Lent, giving the ten percent of the three hundred and sixty-five days every year He gives us, is more about us than him. 

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Great Lent starts tomorrow. Forty days, forty opportunities to heal our souls, care for our spiritual well-being, reevaluate and strengthen our relationship and bond with our Savior and source of life. For some of us this might be reading the Holy Bible every day, and for others it might be praying. For some, it might be fasting and doing acts of charity, and for others, it might be all of these. But whatever you decide to do, please use this wonderful opportunity to reconnect and rejuvenate your faith, spiritual life, and relationship with your loving Father in heaven.

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