The grave purple colors, the ashes and sticks, the lack of
flowers, cross everywhere; all remind us that this week we begin Lent. “Here we
go, again,” we might think. “No,
not already,” we might protest.
Maybe we’ll look into our religious storeroom and cart out some of
practices we’ve stored since last spring. Let’s see, “Oh yeah, I gave
up.........last year. That
worked. Hmm, I also gave up
alligator nuggets. Not a whole lot of desire for those anyway. Hmm, I made extra time for some
spiritual reading that was good. I
made a contribution to Catholic Relief Services. That worked.” And so, we pull
out of the closet well-worn items to enter the season properly. I guess that is
all good, even if it is boring.
Maybe, though, we can find a way to make this Lent special[1].
The Gospel for today is very simple. Instead of
elaborating on the temptations of the Lord, Mark just briefly says that Jesus
went into the desert for forty days, fought off temptation, was administered to
by angels and then returned and went to battle. He proclaimed the Kingdom of God.
Instead of complicating our lives this Lent, may I
suggest that we picture a simple image and let that image motivate our lives. I
have an image that we could keep before us throughout Lent. The image is Jesus
crying.
We find several instances of Jesus crying in the
Gospels. Jesus looked at the city
of Jerusalem and wept, O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem how often I would have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her
chicks, but you would not have me. He wept over his friend Lazarus, over
death and the pain that death brought to Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha,
their neighbors and the entire village of Bethany. When the night before he
died, Judas betrayed him, you could sense the pain in the Lord’s voice and the
tear in his eye when he said, Judas, do
you betray me with a kiss, a kiss of friendship. Before this Jesus wept in
that Garden. He could feel the
gravity of our sins and the personal price he would have to pay for them.
The image of the weeping Jesus could be ours for this
Lent. How must the Lord feel,
knowing that his people can find no solutions to world events other than the
organized killing called war? Jesus weeps. How must he feel knowing that the
money spent on eye makeup or video games in one year in the United States could
end the African famine so easily ignored in our country? Jesus cries. How must
the Lord feel knowing that we have used the advancement of technology to devise
new ways of killing from the womb to the battlefield? Jesus weeps. How must the
Lord feel knowing that we have used devotion to Him as an excuse to attack
people He also loves, like the gay trying to live a chaste life or the woman
suffering from post abortion trauma. Jesus weeps. How must the Lord feel
knowing that so often we have all just given up, pushed our Christian
responsibilities to the side, attempted to separate morality from our faith and
claimed that any twinge of conscience is merely Catholic guilt not an inner
call to conversion. Jesus weeps.
What we do during Lent, what we surrender, is not for
its own sake, nor is it simply for our own self-improvement. What we do, the good deeds, the
prayers, the sacrifices, all have as their goal a deep and personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. Our goal is to know him with a burning desire and to love
him with a burning passion.
The image of Jesus weeping reminds us that He is
someone who cares about each one of us. He suffers when we hurt ourselves by
giving in to sin. He allows His love for us to reduce him to tears whenever we
betray that love.
And God placed the rainbow in the sky. It was a sign.
It was a covenant. It was a sign that God would never give up on His people. It
was a covenant, that if his sons and daughters would turn from sin and choose
Him, their lives would be full of beauty, love and goodness.
He will not give up on us. He cries when He sees us
jump into immorality. He cries when we give up on ourselves. He cries out of
love.
Perhaps if we contemplate the weeping Jesus this Lent,
we will turn from all that is destroying us. We will turn from all that gives him pain. Perhaps we will really change our
lives. Perhaps we will give up
those elements of our lifestyle that are slowly killing us. If we contemplate the weeping Jesus, we
can change this Lent. And this won’t be because we fear a spanking. It will be
because we can hear Jesus crying ■
[1]
First Sunday of Lent B, February 22, 2015. Readings: Genesis 9:8-15; Psalm
25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:12-15.
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