GateHouse News Service which was posted on WickedLocal.com. Enjoy - the article is below.
Christians the world over are moving through Lent towards Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is an inclination inherent in many Christians to rush past the penance of Lent into the joy of Easter. Resurrection, spring, flowers and new life tend to be more attractive than penance, fasting, crosses and tombs. It’s not that we shouldn’t hurry towards Easter, but that doesn’t necessitate rushing through Lent. The desire to rush through Lent must be fought against.
Pope John Paul II often said that we are an Easter people; this concept and turn of phrase has gained a common parlance across many Christian groups. Easter, however, makes no sense and has no significance without Lent. The Pope knew this, but sometimes we forget. Without the cross and tomb, any focus on the resurrection and empty tomb are just that: empty. We can’t celebrate God’s victory over death if we don’t spend time contemplating the means by which that victory was won. This does not mean that we revel in the suffering of Jesus’ passion, but instead we marvel at the love that makes such suffering, such sacrifice bearable. We gaze with rapt attention at the crucified Christ knowing full well that it was our sins, our personal sins, that put Him there, yet He hangs there in perfect love for us nonetheless. If the goal of the Christian life is transformation in Christ, we need to stay in Lent, focused on His passion, to see how we are to be transformed in Him.
At the heart of the Passion is the crucifixion. At the heart of the crucifixion is the death of Jesus. His life, however, was not taken from Him, it was offered by Him to the Father with the words, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46) We cannot abandon ourselves over to the Father, handing to Him our spirit, as did Jesus, if we have already handed over our spirit to the world and its temptations and empty promises. This is the key to Lent, to the fasting and penances and spiritual exercises: by fasting and penances, we cut the ties that bind us to the things of this world, both good and bad, in order to prepare for the better things, the perfect things only offered by God. By changing our focus and adjusting our gaze, by emptying ourselves of all that this world gives, we open ourselves to the transforming grace with which God wishes to fill us. One example of this would be abstinence from meat on Fridays. By saying no to something good, to something like meat, which we enjoy, we grow in the virtue of temperance. In other words, if we build the habit of indulging and feeding our every whim and appetite, even with things that might be good, our instinct, our habit becomes to simply say yes to our appetites without a second thought, even when our appetites desire something that is not good. By fasting we learn to put things in right order, not allowing ourselves to be distracted by even the good things of this world to the neglect of the better things of the life to come.
In Lent, we remember when Jesus went into the desert to fast and pray. Through Lent, we go with Him, and learn that even in the desert, where there is nothing, we still have God and He alone suffices. By quieting the desires of the body we are better able to pay attention to the one desire of the soul, which is union with God. We come to see how little our body needs compared with how much our soul needs. In the fourth century, Saint Augustine taught that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. Lent makes us aware of the absolute truth that all we need is God. Through life and death and into life again, God is the only constant. He is more than we could ever want or imagine, and the fulfillment of our every desire in ways we will never fully understand in this life.
If we are to be like Christ, transformed in Him, then we must do as He did, and carry our cross as He carried His. For us this means we must take up the crosses of everyday life, bearing with patience all the difficulties and struggles that may come, and love in spite of them, fixing our eyes always on the perfect love of God. This takes a lifetime, of which Lent is our yearly reminder, and we can’t rush it. Only by sharing in the love of the Cross can we merit the joy of our own promised resurrection, on the last day of this world, when Christ will come again in glory and invite us to the Father’s house. By detaching ourselves from the things of this life, and desiring only the things of the life to come, we prepare to accept that invitation for which we are made: to enter into and share God’s glory in Heaven.
Father William Ventura is curate at St. John’s Church in Chelmsford. His column appears every two weeks.
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