SEEING CLEARLY FOR LENT: an excerpt from Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca, St. Mary’s Episcopal, Stone Harbor, NJ
Lent has always been the Church’s season of truth-telling. It is the long, honest walk into the wilderness, where illusions fall away and we discover what has been shaping us more than we realized. In every age, Lent names the false gods that have claimed our loyalty and calls us back to the living God. In our time, one of those false gods is unexamined media consumption.
Scripture has a name for what happens when a people lose the ability to tell truth from lie. The prophets call it “moral inversion”. Isaiah cries out, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.” This is not simply about bad behavior. It is about disordered perception. When a society can no longer see clearly, cruelty becomes reasonable, lies become patriotic, and conscience is dismissed as weakness.
Corporate media has learned how to exploit this disorder. Media literacy, in this moment, is not a political hobby. It is a spiritual discipline.
Formation always precedes action. Jesus knew this. That is why he warned, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” What we take in shapes what we tolerate. What we repeat shapes what we believe. What we normalize shapes who we become. Media is not neutral. It catechizes. It forms imagination. It trains the heart.
In times of moral inversion, media often functions like Pharaoh’s magicians, performing convincing illusions that mimic truth but ultimately serve power. Repetition replaces reflection. Outrage replaces discernment. Fear replaces love. When this happens, people do not stop believing in right and wrong. They are taught to reverse them while still feeling righteous.
This is why media literacy must be reclaimed as a Lenten practice, alongside prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To practice media literacy spiritually is to slow down the intake of noise and ask holy questions. Who benefits from this story? Whose suffering is being minimized or erased? What fear is being activated in me? Does this lead me toward compassion, truth, and responsibility, or toward contempt, domination, and indifference?
Jesus consistently refused the narratives offered by empire. In the wilderness, he rejected the lie that power could save the world. In public, he named hypocrisy when religious leaders used language to obscure injustice. In his trial, he stood silent before propaganda because he would not participate in distortion. His faithfulness was not passive. It was clear-eyed. Lent invites us into that same clarity.
The Church must say this plainly. Any media that requires you to suspend compassion, excuse cruelty, abandon truth, or distrust your neighbor fails the Gospel test. No matter how loudly it invokes faith, freedom, or nation. God does not need distortion to defend truth. God does not require lies to accomplish justice.
Lent is not about self-denial for its own sake. It is about clearing away what numbs the soul so that resurrection can be recognized when it arrives. Media literacy is part of that clearing. It is repentance at the level of attention. In a time of moral inversion, choosing to see clearly is holy work.
Lenten Blessings to You,
Pastor Annette