“Rend your hearts, not your
garments, and return to the LORD, your God” – Joel 2:13
“Go to your inner room,
close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.” – Mt 6:6
Today we begin our journey of Lent
through the desert. The desert is our inner landscape where we recognize areas
of unfreedom and resistance that deadens life but to also re-discover how life
is teeming anew. We start our journey marked by ashes with the invitation
to “repent and believe in the Gospels.”
The black cross on my forehead
reminds me that I can never save myself. Moreover, I don’t have to. Someone
else already has. He who “who did not know sin” has taken on all my sins, all
of our sins. He enlightens our darkness, walks with us, empowering us to
greater life and freedom.
“Render your hearts and return to
the Lord” calls me to greater willingness to open-wide what is deeper within so
that I can be transformed and be with God more than ever before. For me, that
is both exhilarating and frightening. Receiving a change of heart, but through
open-heart surgery?
“Go to your inner room” is a
gentle yet challenging invitation to encounter more fully a God who hides in
the depth of my inmost being and also in community. We are invited to listen to
the voice within, but also to pay attention to other people’s needs. On this
journey, the death and resurrection of Jesus becomes more than a historical
event that took place long ago, but an inner experience that takes place in our
hearts.
It is a blessing that we have
forty days to undergo this passage from outer ashes to inner self. It will take
time to unearth this Good News, to be awakened anew to a deeper awareness that
each of us are incredibly cherished and passionate loved as we are, in spite of
ourselves, beyond our wildest dreams. The habits “giving up” a vice or “picking
up” a virtue such as fasting, almsgiving, and praying are ways* to wake-up to
the realization that in Christ, I am, we are, already saved, freed, and loved
tenderly.
Lord, help me
to open-wide my heart and journey to my inner room to uncover how I am saved
and called to grow this Lent.
*see the US Bishops’ Lenten
Page or Pope Francis’ Lenten
Message for concrete ways to
grow through Lent.
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