LENT HELPS US TO SEE

Here is an encouraging article I read today. Lent is not just about "giving up things" it's about encountering our Lord Jesus Christ. It's dying to self so we can encounter our Lord. If we are so full of ourselves there is no place for our Lord to go. Jesus loves each of us with a passion! Lent helps us to refocus!

- Catholic Exchange - http://catholicexchange.com -
The Depths of Lent
Posted By Doreen Truesdell On March 2, 2009 @ 12:03 am In Doreen Truesdel

There’s a definite pattern to the Gospels as we enter the Lenten season, and it’s a striking one. We’re shown images of lepers, stopped-up ears, blind eyes and paralytic limbs all seeking the touch of Christ. These poor souls are all hoping for physical healing, and even though they are not intellectuals or religious zealots, they are aware of Jesus’ reputation. They seem to know intuitively that Christ can heal them if He chooses to.
Christ does choose to physically heal them, one after the other, but He gives them all a bonus, something they didn’t expect and weren’t thinking about: spiritual healing. In fact, He often withholds fulfilling their hopes for physical health until He has addressed the state of their souls and the depths of their faith in Him. Their spiritual sicknesses are Christ’s primary concern.
In every case these sufferers draw close to Christ in order to receive healing. In every case the sufferer does something extraordinary to meet with Christ. The leper leaves the restrictions of his colony; the deaf man and the blind man are both led by Jesus away from the crowds in the villages; the paralytic is lowered through the roof of the house where Our Lord is.
What do we have in common with these Gospel characters? While many people were clambering for Christ’s healing, these are the individuals recorded as particular examples for our meditation. What’s blocking up our ears? What’s blinding our eyes? Which of the many distractions or temptations of the world have paralyzed our limbs and our hearts in following the call of Christ? And what kind of extraordinary effort are we willing to make in order to encounter the Messiah and be healed by Him?
We start Lent with ashes, an outward sign of our inward spiritual illnesses and weaknesses. For one day, on our foreheads, we publicly declare that we recognize our failings and are sorry for them. Just like the leper, the blind man and the paralytic, we seek healing and reconciliation.
As for the other 39 days of Lent, the power to seek conversion is sleeping within us. We came from dust and it is certain to dust we will return. But let us consider the power of our humanity while we are on this short earthly journey. By virtue of our free will (itself a gift from God) we are given the power to choose whether we will pursue healing for our sins or not, whether we will draw close to Christ or keep ourselves at a comfortable distance. In this way we could say that we have great power over God: the power to reject Him.
Once we consider this power we can become more sensitive to the vulnerabilities of Christ, Whose Heart beats with love and forgiveness for each of us. “I desire that you know more profoundly the love that burns in My Heart for souls… ” laments the Savior in The Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalski, Divine Mercy in My Soul. “I want to give Myself to souls; I yearn for souls…Imagine the most tender of mothers who has great love for her children, while those children spurn her love. Consider her pain. No one can console her. This is but a feeble image and likeness of My love .”
Recognizing the great potential that exists between our free will and Christ’s mercy is necessary to our spiritual journey. The former is in constant flux, but the latter is constant and fathomless. Where these two forces intersect, there is holiness. How often they intersect is a decision most of us tend to re-negotiate every day, with an eye towards moderation and comfort. Moderate love, however, is not what Christ desires. A lukewarm Lent minimizes His opportunities to heal us from sin and give us the expansive freedom that comes from placing our ordinary lives in His extraordinary hands.
Understanding the relationship between our free will and Christ’s vulnerability in His love for us also places quite a different spin on our Lenten journey. It changes the dichotomy of a demanding Lord and a subjugated servant to the intimacy of friendship and deep love. It’s the difference between obligation and oblation, as we move away from an attitude of “giving up” things to giving freely of ourselves. Now we begin to really understand why we make sacrifices for Lent—doing without dessert, television, internet, gossip, resentment, pride—because these unvirtuous distractions get in the way of intimacy with Christ. They get in the way of loving Him. And Jesus wants so much to be loved by us.
Between the extremes of rejecting Christ or subjecting ourselves to His will are myriad gradations, like the measurements on a precision scale. With Christ as the center point, the sliding scale of our lives modulates in its nearness to Him, with each decision we make placing us either closer to Him or further away. It’s like a child’s game of taking giant steps forward or baby steps backward. We are in constant motion and continual tension between doing His will or ours.
“At the end of the day, I ask myself just two questions: What did I do for Christ today, and what did I do to Christ today ?” stated Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in her usual matter-of-fact manner. All of the saints were acutely aware that either we are for Christ or we are against Him. There is no possibility of standing still on the sliding scale of faith.
If we are looking for a fruitful Lent, a Lent of healing and intimacy, it won’t come to us in a comfort zone. Christ penetrates to the heart of those He touches and makes it clear that He has come to bring much more than physical relief. The real suffering of mankind is our estrangement from our Creator and the healing we need is the type that reaches into our souls.
Article printed from Catholic Exchange: http://catholicexchange.com