Friday Lenten Reflection, Part V: On Mending Frayed Relationships
Petition 13
Knit together in your love all whose relationships have frayed, that they may find reconciliation and new beginnings...
Petition 14
Help us to see and accept our own responsibility in the harm that has been done and for which we repent and seek forgiveness...
With these petitions we celebrate, by openly exploring, our bonds with one another.
Anne-Louis Girodet, Joseph Recognized by His Brothers, 1789
In Petition 13, we plead for others in need, asking the loving God to mend a creation that we compromised, not destroyed: “knitting” back together a social fabric frayed most often by friction.
Mending and knitting, metaphors we often use for treating bodily injury, are perfect terms for repairing the social body. Mending and knitting are also traditionally women’s skills. Is this healing love a feminine aspect of the divine that Christians have identified since at least the Middle Ages? Think of the teachings of Hildegard of Bingen and Julian of Norwich. Divine love becomes an embracing womb-like environment that infuses us with what we need for renewal.
There are so many frayed relationships today everywhere, public and private! Political allies turned testy; communities fighting one another; families and couples in trouble.
The pandemic has fueled many of those long-simmering hot spots. Yet the isolation we entered to contain COVID19 has encouraged a countering discipline: to confront ourselves and the nature and value of relationships.
Lent, the way of Opportunity and renewal especially at this critical point in the pandemic, gives us that special space with resources to do so.
Can any of us follow the forgiving Old Testament Joseph (Genesis: 37-45), shown above, after his envious brothers sold him into slavery? Can we even be the repentant brothers after such dark emotions and actions?
What about the many around the world who are born and conditioned to hate or distrust?
It’s a vital step inward to examine and repent for our own responsibility for harm in relationships (Petition 14). Among the most corrosive of the frailties addressed in the Litany: anger at our own frustrations and envy of the more fortunate (Petition 5); and confronting false judgments, uncharitable thoughts towards our neighbors, and prejudice towards those who differ from us (Petition 9).
How often have we prejudged people by negative stereotypes applied to us as well (Petition 9)? One from my own life: “Americans are arrogant, self-righteous, and blind.”
We hurt others by turning from them in frustration with ourselves (Petition 5).
Can we forgive and love ourselves as we might God and our neighbor? Can we transcend vengeance and mend frayed relationships? Can we build new bonds in fraught terrain? Reflection and penitence can revitalize hope and energy especially if we decide that our place within those bonds matters.
—Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator
About Lenten Reflections
Throughout Lent, Father Peter and Suzanne Glover Lindsay will reflect on some of the petitions of confession, repentance, and resolve from the Litany of Penitence, available to download below.
