Yesterday, I was near exhaustion. I barely dragged myself through the day. All I could do last night – and Hubby was very supportive – was to lay on the couch with my eyes closed until I had the energy to drag myself upstairs to bed.
Therefore, I’m running a little late. So sorry.
I had signed up for a Lenten program, a series of emails from a priest to help walk me through this season of self-inspection, reflection, penitence, and prayer. I bring these to you. Even if you’re not Catholic, you may find something helpful in them. (And since I couldn’t do anything yesterday, you get treated to two of them today:)
Lent Day 1 – Judged According to Love
The Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross said that in the evening of life we shall be judged according to our love. In Matthew 25 the nature of love is specified. It is not primarily a feeling, an attitude, or a conviction, but rather a concrete act on behalf of those in need–the hungry, the homeless, the lonely, the imprisoned, the forgotten. It is the bearing of another’s burden.
Here’s a challenge: Over the next forty-seven days, resolve to perform a particular and sustained act of love.
Make several visits to your relative in the nursing home. Converse regularly with a lonely person on your block. Tutor and befriend a kid who might be in danger of losing his way. Repair a broken friendship. Bring together bickering factions at your place of work. Make a number of financial contributions to a worthy organization that needs help.
Numerous spiritual masters have witnessed to something odd: Belief in God is confirmed and strengthened not so much from intellectual effort as from moral action.
When a man once asked the English Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins what he must do in order to believe, Hopkins replied, “Give alms.”
As you love through tangible acts, you will come to believe more deeply and to enter more fully into friendship with God.
Lent Day 2 – No Way Up But Down
Something I have noticed over the years is that the holiest people in our tradition are those who are most aware of their sinfulness. Whether it is Paul, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, or Mother Teresa, the saints are those who are convinced of their inadequacy.
When Isaiah encounters the Lord he says, “I am a man of unclean lips!” When Peter is in the presence of the Messiah he says, “Lord, leave me, for I am a sinful man.” G.K. Chesterton once said, “A saint is someone who knows he’s a sinner.”
The holy person has no illusions about himself. It is an extraordinary and surprising phenomenon that the saints seem to be those who are most conscious of their sinfulness.
At times we are tempted to think that this is a form of attention-getting, a sort of false humility. But then we realize that it is proximity to the light that reveals the smudges and imperfections that otherwise go undetected. A windshield that appears perfectly clean and transparent in the early morning can become opaque when the sun shines directly on it. Standing close to the luminosity of God, the holy person is more intensely exposed, his beauty and his ugliness more thoroughly unveiled.
There’s no way up but down; no real holiness without awareness. At least part of being a saint is knowing you’re a sinner.