Lent #28: Discipline 7 of 7—Marking our Mortality.

Our mortal nature

(First Corinthians 15:53)

“Marking our Mortality”: that’s our last Lenten Discipline, at least according to the Book of Common Prayer. This one is too easy. Just getting out of bed “marks my mortality.” But, it was not always so. The “mark of mortality” sneaks up on us when we find ourselves “bent over”, when, as the wisest of mortals observes: “The

      -grinders cease because they are few, and

      -those that look through the windows are dimmed…

      -When one rises up at the voice of a bird, and…

      -the grasshopper drags itself along and

      -desire fails; …and

        -the pitcher is broken at the fountain” (Ecc 12).

Like a “broken pitcher,” vitality begins to leaks out of us.

I suppose marking our mortality is a Lenten Discipline because of Good Friday when Christ took on our mortality; and, Easter Morning when God turned mortality on its head so that “our mortal bodies might be clothed with Christ’s immortality” (1Cor 15:53). Immortality is not something we have of ourselves. It comes from God’s decision about us in Jesus Christ. Even throughout Eternity, our immortality comes to us as a gift from the Immortal One.