Today, we begin the discipline of Lent. Our Lenten practices of almsgiving, prayer and fasting help us to meditate on the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. This is the Paschal mystery of God’s Love made real and true for all humankind. This is the truth of our Christian Catholic faith; we recall this more intimately and with greater reverence through our participation in the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.Individually and together, almsgiving, prayer and fasting also invite each of us into the particular Lenten experience of going into the wilderness, and there meeting God. This journey however is not of our own making. It is God’s divine providence: seeing how our efforts to be saintly are often marred by our human weakness, God reaches out to us even more at this time. He does so to lift us up from the quagmire of tainted human existence into His own wonderful light. Hosea reminds us that it is God who calls us into the desert to speak tenderly to us (2: 14). Lent is therefore a graced moment for us to respond to these, God's redeeming actions.
What would God say to us if we meet him there? Perhaps, this painful truth: “You have sinned against Me and against My people.” We know this even if we try ever so often to evade it. Yet, God utters this in the same breath as he speaks tender words of forgiveness. These words remind us, like it did the prodigal son, that we can come home; there, we will be welcomed in a love that accepts, affirms and celebrates who we are, still God’s beloved.
I’d like to believe that when you and I dare to be truly honest with ourselves and God, we can accept this invitation to go into the wilderness. This wilderness however is not physical; it is the barren, dry and sometimes ugly landscape of our Christian life. When we brave ourselves to traverse this landscape that we often avoid entering, we will surprisingly find a merciful God who has always been present there, forgiving us to nourish daily, even as we pain Him again and again with our sins.
This is a Lenten theme we know so well. Sadly, we are sometimes numb to its deeper message. I am guilty of this too, now and then. This is why in my prayer at this time I wish to meditate on this Lenten truth: God wants to give us His mercy because He is truly a compassionate God. To guide my prayer, I have written these questions: “Does it really matter to me that God wishes to be merciful because He loves me? Do I really want God’s mercy? What must I do to receive it?”
Perhaps, you too might want to reflect on these questions as we begin Lent together. I believe meditating on them will return us to that singular invitation Lent presents us with, conversion. Like the prodigal son, conversion is the pathway for you and me, who so often try our best to be good but repeatedly stumble, to really reclaim God’s gift that the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus proclaims—His infinite mercy saves!
artwork: Christ of st john of the cross by salvador dali, 1951
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