I confess to being perplexed by the invitation to write on ‘koinonia’ in relation to Lent.
The core meaning of the Greek word ‘koinonia’ is found in the English terms community, communion; it relates to joint participation, sharing and intimacy. The word appears 19 times in most editions of the New Testament.
Lent on the other hand is associated with abstention, relinquishment, giving up of something, usually something which is pleasurable. It is the religious observance in the liturgical year commemorating the 40 days Christ spent fasting in the desert before beginning his public ministry.
And it’s preceded in some traditions by carnival, a period of feasting and celebration which also acts as a ‘carne vale’, a ‘farewell to meat’. The etymology of the term signifies the approaching fast. So koinonia seems, on the face of it, to have more to do with carnival than Lent.
However as I let the theme settle, some sort of sense of something needing to be explored emerged.
Letting go and re-engagement
I found myself pondering the movement of the church calendar through from advent, Christmas and epiphany into Lent, triduum and Easter; seasons of expectation, arrival, rejoicing, wonder, relinquishment, loss, sorrow, hope re-encountered. And how like life, I think, the seasons which we cycle through, bidden or unbidden.
Henri Nouwen writes beautifully and perceptively about the practices of silence, solitude and fasting in his book ‘Clowning in Rome’. A key theme in the book is a version of the perennial both/and: for example in relation to fasting, we have to know how to do feasting ‘well’ in order to do fasting. Similarly in order to silence ‘well’ we have to embrace the times of noise, sometimes clamour, in our lives: and solitude and community/togetherness must also learn to walk hand in hand.
As we engage in the three practices of silence, solitude and fasting, we find a way of being in what can be a noisy, overwhelming, sometimes frantic life and still connect with something deeper.
And so, in a way which might at first seem curious, the disciplines of abstinence - as exemplified by the spirit and practices of Lent - are in fact deeply ordered towards koinonia. That in the ‘letting go’ of Lent, we are at some deeper level ordering ourselves towards re-engagement with life.
Nouwen is perceptive on the need for these both/ands: if we are temperamentally inclined to one or the other - fasting rather than feasting, solitude rather than community - we risk slipping into a form of avoidance, of settling into what is comfortable for us.
So as we move through the liturgical year, that very rhythm or movement invites us into a place of reflection of our own dispositions and how we might gently question them. And in doing so we stand a greater chance of taking our place in the community (or communities) we are part of from a more rooted, spacious and receptive place.
Gus MacLeod