Lent, a Time to Admit Sin and Choose Love, Life and Christ

We began Lent on Ash Wednesday with the first reading of the Mass from the prophet Joel telling us to tear open our hearts and not our clothing.  Tearing open one’s clothing was the Old Testament Jews favorite way of expressing grief and horror in the face of sin.  Sin is rebellion against God.  It is the creature saying no to its creator and to the good life he wants us to have.  From Adam and Eve’s choosing their own will over God’s, to Cain murdering his brother Abel, to King David’s adultery and then murder to hide it, down through the murder of the prophets to Jesus’ crucifixion, the power of sin in the world was evident.  But it was not the end of the story.  

On Ash Wednesday we accepted  ashes as a reminder of how fragile our life is, and how short.  Yet, there is hope.  Each Lent Joel reminds us that our God is “slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment” (Jl 2:12-18).  He says that this Lent too, “Perhaps he will again relent and leave behind him a blessing.”  Indeed, what a blessing it would be if we were freed from COVID-19,  if the frightful numbers of hospitalizations and deaths were to decline greatly and then disappear.  

Only God can turn a pandemic into a blessing.  But that is precisely what we should be praying for this Lent.  In times like this we are much like the early Christians in Corinth to whom St. Paul wrote, “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21).  God in Jesus showed us how to handle suffering even though he was sinless and therefore not deserving of any kind of punishment.  But Jesus was willing to die the most horrible of deaths just to show us that God never abandons us.  He is with us in illness, in storms, in war, in the “peacetime” violence  of our neighborhoods and streets.  He shared our death and invites us to share his resurrection through many recoveries in this life and finally our own death and resurrection.  
We “become the righteousness of God” when we extend Jesus’ healing power to others by nursing them or comforting them in their illnesses, by feeding them when they are driven to food banks, having lost their employment in the pandemic.  Jesus said that he came that we may have life and have it more abundantly.  Lent is about doing what Jesus did and changing anything in our lives that is blocking his kind of full life in us.  Many of us have the power and the money to support the work of Christ already going on in our communities.  And in this time of a global pandemic we can extend the love of Christ to our neighbors by doubling our efforts to not become spreaders of the virus.  Just follow what the medical scientists advise: masks, hand-washing, avoiding crowds and getting vaccinated.  

We “rend our hearts”  when we use this sacred time of Lent to follow Jesus into the desert and wrestle with our own devils of selfishness and anger over others having the right to place restrictions on us for the common good.  Read the “Temptation of Christ” in St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter Four.  They are all about Jesus using the powers God gave him for himself and his aggrandizement rather than for the good of others.  They dare him to flee from death, which God wants him to share with the rest of us.  Turn those stones into bread, why fast for others?  Throw yourself down from the top of the temple; God can’t let you die. Worship me instead of God and you get the whole world.  

We are all tempted to seek our maximum comfort, perfect health and safety, and all of the world’s wealth we can get.  Jesus was human, and God allowed him to be tempted.  But Jesus lived with the full grace of God, which he calls us to share.  He stared the devil and his own death in the face and answered, “The Lord your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”  

Lent allows us to seek the generosity of God’s life, the life which is love, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  They help us with the life-long conflict within ourselves to curve inwards and seek our own good above that of others.  This is sin, the root of evil.  It brings death into the world.  But God allows this because he has the remedy for it, the life, death and resurrection of his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, and his invitation to us to share these experiences with him.  

So let us make our individual Lenten walks through the desert with Jesus.  They began with ashes and dust, but we know where they will end.  Resurrection!   

Father Carville is a retired priest in the Diocese of Baton Rouge and writes on current topics for The Catholic Commentator. He can be reached at johnnycarville@gmail.com.