Lent Week 1 Year B
We are now in Lent. This season of the Church when we can think seriously about how we prepare for the suffering, death and resurrection of Our Lord. Lent is this time of the year when we examine our consciences and look at who we are, what we have become; how we live our lives in glory of God; at what in our lives is an example of God’s love for us shown in our actions and behaviours to others.
Lent is this time of year when we prepare for Easter by spring cleaning our souls and our spirits. “Repent and believe the Good News.” These words, or ones that are similar, are those that are offered to us when ashes are marked on our foreheads or sprinkled on our heads on Ash Wednesday: not this year of course but usually!
According to one dictionary source I used, repent means - view or think of (an action or omission) with deep regret or remorse. But this only takes us to the start of the Lenten process. We need to offer our sorrow for these actions or omissions and then ask for forgiveness. The sacrament of Reconciliation, previously known as Forgiveness or Confession taught us that there had to be these three parts to the process. We had to know and understand that we had done wrong and regret this. We were then taught to confess our sins and then seek reconciliation with God: to say sorry and mean it and then seek to put ourselves back into balance with God.
“The time has come.” We never know when the final time will come and this past year has highlighted this to so many of us with the friends and neighbours that we have loved and lost, and with those currently who are so ill. The time to make ourselves right with God is now. The time to sort out our own houses, our lives and our souls, is now. The time to make right with neighbours, is now.
Our lives are not lived in isolation. We are not hermits, alone in caves in the desert. We live lives that interact with others in everything that we do and in everything that we say. We impact on them and they impact on us. Our job, our sacred duty as Christians is to make sure that this impact, every impact, is positive and reflects the love of God. Our role in Lent is to make sure that every person we meet, then leaves feeling that much better because of that meeting. There are a million and one things in the world today to pull us down, to make us sad or feel depressed. Don’t let us, you, be one of them. Especially during Lent.
As Father Paschal said on Wednesday, we do not need to tear our clothes or mess up our hair – those who have any! We do not need to put on public shows of our fasting and abstinence. This year we maybe don’t need to do much of any or all of this in the face of the past year we have just experienced.
But do look to see what positive thing you can do that will uplift your and someone else’s life: that will maybe bring a smile where there was none before; that will lighten a load and bring cheer.
Lent has historically been seen as a time when we give up things; when we stop or resist things. But this Lent, let it be a time when you start things, when you do extra things deliberately, when in spite of all of the bad and negative things around us, we don’t give up. When we determine that God’s love for us will shine through our very lives because, “… the kingdom of God is close at hand.
Let us determine to make ourselves right with God by taking up the opportunities of the Sacrament of Reconciliation here in St John’s and/or by trying to fit in one Sunday visit to the Stations of the Cross. Let us do something extra to help in our personal preparation for Easter;
Proper preparation prevents pretty poor prayerful performance.
“The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.”