On Wednesday we
will begin the season of Lent. These 40 days are a gift that the Church gives
us each year: a chance to remember who we really are, and where it is that we
are going.
Franciscan Father
Richard Rohr shares a story about a young couple putting
their newborn infant to bed for the night in the nursery. Their four-year-old
son comes in and says to them, “I want to talk to the baby!” They answer him,
“Yes, you can talk to him from now on.” But the boy is persistent, “Please,
Mommy and Daddy, I want to talk to him now, and by myself.”
Surprised
and curious, they let the young boy into the nursery and cup their ears to the
door, wondering what he might be saying. This is what
they heard their four-year old son say to his baby brother, “Quick, tell me
where you came from. Quick, tell me who made you. I’m starting to forget!”
And so is it with
each of us.
When God made you
and me he embraced each of us like a mother would bundle up a beloved child to
go out into the cold for the very first time. And like a parent might slip a
little identification note into a child’s pocket, just in case he or she should
get lost, God put a little tiny piece of himself inside of us. That little
piece of God inside of you and me and every person who has ever lived is our immortal
soul. And life, life, is the journey of our soul back home to its loving Creator.
But
something happens on that journey, usually around the age of seven, the age of
reason. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we eat from the tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil, and we become self-conscious. We get
distracted by many kinds of fruit: the approval of others, the attraction of
things, the desire for possessions, and the need for control. And we start to forget. We lose touch
with our soul and with God.
Father
Rohr calls this condition ‘Universal Amnesia’. We have forgotten who we really
are and where it is that we are going. Ash Wednesday
and the season of Lent are meant to remind us that we are children of God on
our journey home.
As followers of
Jesus we have the benefit of a map for that journey. That map is the Gospel.
Jesus lays it out in detail in the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. And
when the Pharisees asked him what they must do to gain eternal life, he summed
it up for them and for us: “Love God with your whole heart and your whole mind
and your whole soul, and love others — love others — as you love yourself.”
This Lent, as we
sacrifice some little pleasures, some things we really enjoy, let us remember who
we really are and where it is that we are going. Let us sit before Our Lord in
the Blessed Sacrament and ponder how well we are following his map in the
Gospel. And let us do this quickly before we, like that little four-year old
boy, start to forget.
………………………………………………………………………………..
Readers
of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on
Amazon.com:
Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday
Life
Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for
Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry
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