Preparation for Lent

Today is the forth Sunday in Ordinary time. Wednesday of this week is Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. The forty day period before Easter in which we accompany Jesus, through the desert and, in His temptations by the devil. The Church devotes February to meditation on the Lord’s passion.

Today the Scriptures bring us again to the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Not the poor in material things but rather the poor in spirit, the lowly, the humble. We should be clear on the meaning of the Beatitudes. They are the identifying marks of One who sacrifices Himself for God and for others, the marks of our blessed Lord.

The further away from the fire one is on a cold day the less warmth one feels. Christ is the sun. He is not only warmth but light as well. Our proximity to the person of Jesus is crucial, the closer we are to Him the safer we are. If our faith has become dull and we have become lax in our devotion, our prayers or in simply loving, if we move closer to Him He will restore us.

Christ is all. “All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing that has been made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness grasped it not.”

If we find ourselves alone in a completely dark room we are uneasy and wonder where the light switch is and start groping for it. In the uneasy and dark moments of our lives we must turn to Christ who will lighten the dark corners and remove the shadows so we can return to the path of a lively faith.

These forty days of Lent are given us for reexamination, to find Christ who is alone waiting for us to approach Him and to spend time with Him as He contemplates His passion. It can be a way to know Jesus like we have never know Him before. To study the Beatitudes and His passion are the best way. But people are afraid to get too close because of what He may ask or require of them. The nearer we get to Him the more love we find and the happier we are. We discover that He is planning a great and thrilling adventure just for us. “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart for they will see God.”

There are two events in Scripture that we might ponder as we think of Lent. One in Mark 14:51 and the other is JN 20. The first is when Jesus was arrested in the garden by the soldiers. And the second is in the upper room eight days after the resurrection.

In Mark, Jesus had gone with the disciples to the garden to pray after the last supper. They were there with Him, but all of a sudden it became dangerous and verse 51 says simply: “The disciples all left Him and fled.”

We want to get close to the Lord who is the fountain of life, of living water. We resolve to dampen our self love and to follow the commandments and the moral law. We will change our lives. But when things get tough and even dangerous and the spirit of the world challenges our faith will we stick it out and stay with Christ or will we flee and leave Him?

In JN when Jesus entered the upper room through the locked doors on the night of the day of His resurrection He said to them: “Peace be to you.”, and showed them His hand and His side. Thomas was not with them. We recall that He was called “The Doubter”. He was told by the others that they had seen the Lord. Thomas said, “Unless I put my hand into His side and see His hands and the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails I will not believe.”

Eight days later when Jesus came again Thomas was there. Jesus said “Peace be with you.” To Thomas who He called by name, He said “Bring here thy finger and see my hands and bring here thy hand and put it into my side and be not unbelieving but believing.”

Thomas said “My Lord and My God.” His faith was restored by seeing and touching the wounds of Christ. People, good people many times, stay away from Christ and let their faith be weakened by doubt like Thomas and by pride and fear.

Thomas became a great apostle and a martyr in India where he spread the true faith of Christ and where the descendant of those first Catholics still live the faith. We have a number of people from that place including priests, residing in Dallas.

But the matter of Jesus wounds are important to each of us and to the whole world especially at this time in our history. The wounds endured at Jesus passion are the wounds that heal, in the fourth suffering servant song found in the book of the prophet Isaiah chapter 53, we read, “And yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. Be we thought of Him as someone punished, struck by God and brought low, yet he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins. On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.”

Christ has formed a relationship with each of us individually. He has called us by name as He called Thomas, He is the bridegroom, His Church and we who belong to it through baptism and faith, is the bride. On earth there is no closer relationship than that between a man and a woman in marriage. They become two in one flesh. In marriage a man and woman know each other in the biblical sense as they are united in body, mind and spirit. This unity cannot be shared with anyone else except in the love they share with the children that they cooperate with God in bringing forth into the world.

What God has joined let no man separate. In marriage the spouses share in the wounds of Christ. It is their vocation.

In the Beatitudes they sacrifice themselves for their spouse and the members of the family. Marriage is founded in Christ’s relationship with His bride, and the love God in the Holy Trinity and on earth in the three persons of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

Our relationship with the wounded and suffering Christ is marital. We achieve our mutual relationship through probing the nail marks and putting our hand into His side as the doubting Thomas was invited to do. It changed his life and he exclaimed my Lord and my God.

Listen to what is said in Psalm 139 about Jesus knowledge of us, “You formed my inmost being, you knit me in my mother’s womb…. My very self you knew, my bones were not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, fashioned as in the depths of the earth. Your eyes foresaw my acting, in your book all are written down; my days were shaped before one came to be. How precious to me are your designs. O God; how vast the sum of them!”

“Probe me God, know my heart; try me; know my concerns; see if my way is crooked. Then lead me in the ancient paths.”

There is one thing more that we might consider in our Lenten practice and prayers and in our probing of the wounds of Christ and that is that the probing and testing that is applied to us in this life has a divine purpose. That purpose is our individual and personal degree of holiness or beatitude. “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

“Christ died on the cross that we might live with Him forever through the resurrection. If we baptized, die with Him we will live with Him. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven.”