Abba Job said to Abba Serinus, “I am careful about what I do in the cell, but when I come out I do as the brothers do.” Abba Serinus said to him, “There is no great virtue in keeping to your regime in your cell, but there is if you keep it when you come out of your cell.”
It's been said that you are who you are when no one is looking. And there's certainly some truth to that. Do we publicly advocate equality while telling racist “jokes” behind closed doors? Do we sing the praises of a healthy diet and then at night, like the song says, hide in our closet eating Twinkies? Certainly what we do and how we act when we think no one is looking can be a measure of our true selves.
But as this conversation between Abbas Job and Serinus points out, maintaining our regimens in public is also important. When locked away in our own world, with nothing to distract us, it's easy to maintain a holy regimen. It's easy to participate in Morning Prayer when there are no other demands on our time. It's easy to stop everything and take a few minutes to pray the Noonday office when we are in our own home. It's easy to keep a fast if you don't have to explain to anyone why you aren't eating.
It's much more difficult to keep daily Morning Prayer when you have office deadlines to meet. It's much more difficult to stop for 10 minutes to pray at noon when people are constantly demanding your attention. It's much more difficult to keep a fast when you have a lunch meeting scheduled and tell the waitress, “Just water,” or feel like you need to explain why you need to turn down someone's offer to take you to lunch.
Abba Serinus is basically telling us that if we can't keep our disciplines and regimens in the face of outside pressure, why bother starting them at all?
We are called to observe a holy Lent through self-examination, repentance, prayer, fasting, self-denial and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. These are all good things and, hopefully, they will bring us closer to God. But they are designed to remind us, and for us to re-learn, that God is first and foremost in our lives.
If our regimen calls for any of these things, but we only keep them when it's convenient for us, then we really aren't putting God first and foremost in our lives. If we only keep our regimens when it's convenient for us, then we are following a convenient god who is subservient to our wishes and desires.
This Lent, no matter what your regimen is, I pray that you are able to keep it at all times, both in your own home and whenever you are out with your brothers and sisters.
Amen.
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