LENT - A TIME OF GRACE

Come back to me with all your heart

                Every moment of our life is a moment of grace but God in his mercy grants to us a special time of grace called ‘Lent’ which affords us an opportunity to examine our lives in the light of the Gospel and RETURN to the path of true discipleship which leads to salvation and fullness of life. We should never take lightly the words addressed to us on Ash Wednesday: ‘Repent and believe in the Gospel’. These words go back to the call given first by John the Baptist and later by Jesus himself at the beginning of their ministries: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mathew 3:2 and 4:12). Repentance denotes a round-about-turn encompassing all the areas of our life; and Lent is the time to place all these areas before God for a complete inner healing.

                As the Fathers of the Church emphasize, God is an unquenchable fountain of love and mercy to which we need to return again and again for renewal and freshness because the power of sin is so strong that it can easily and imperceptibly take us away from the path of righteousness and truth and land us on a path of self-destruction for which our consciences will give us the ‘warning signs’ unless we have completed ‘deadened’ our consciences. Those warning signs are the voice of God calling us to repentance and new life in the Spirit. Therefore, the Holy Bible tells us, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on that day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work” (Psalm 95:7-9); “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion”(Hebrews 3:15).   

                The words which Our Lord spoke to the Samaritan woman he speaks to us all the time and still more during Lent: “but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4: 14). Again, in his discourse on the ‘bread of life’: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6: 35-36); “This is the bread that comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6: 50-51).

                Like the prodigal son who said, “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15: 18-19),  we have to rise up and, without wasting a moment, run to the embrace of our Heavenly Father who waits for our return.

                In his infinite goodness our Heavenly Father accepts us as we are despite the filth of our sin and shame. This is so beautifully expressed in the hymn we love to sing during Lent based on the Book of Prophet Hosea:

Come back to me with all your heart

don’t let fear keep us apart

Trees do bend, tho’ straight and tall;

so must we to others’ call.

Long have I waited for your coming

home to me and living deeply our new life.

The wilderness will lead you

to your heart where I will speak.

Integrity and justice

with tenderness you shall know.

Long have I waited for your coming

home tome and living deeply our new life.

You shall sleep secure with peace;

faithfulness will be your joy.

Long have I waited for your coming

home to me and living deeply our new life.

The story of the Prodigal Son (or Prodigal Father) . 

God’s children first, sinners later

                The Gospel proclaims the great truth which only Jesus, the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father has revealed to us -that we are God’s children, his daughters and sons first, and sinners later. This great truth is contained in Jesus’ exclamation: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:22); and of course, the parable of the Prodigal Son (or the Prodigal Father) (cf. Luke 15: 11-24) is more than an illustration that we are God’s sons and daughters first, and sinners later! This is the privilege arising from our new birth in Christ from the sacrament of Baptism: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2Corinthians 5:17). Those baptized into Christ can confidently apply to themselves, at all times, the words: “Now the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5: 20-21).  

                In another place St. Paul summarises so well the status of the baptized as ‘heirs with Christ’:  “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8:13-17). 

                To be fellow heirs with Christ means to be fully partakers of the life of the Holy Trinity and this is precisely what Jesus has promised us: “If any one loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14: 23).

Where sin abounded grace superabounded       

                St. Bernard of Clairvaux in one of his sermons on the Song of Songs places before us this profound reflection on St Paul’s words, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more”. I would like to quote some of his thoughts:

                “Where is a safe stronghold for the weak to find rest, if not in the wounds of the Saviour? There, safety is measured by his power to save. The world rages, the body weighs me down, the devil sets his snares, but I do not fall for I am founded on the solid rock. I have sinned grievously, my conscience will be troubled but not in despair for I will recall the wounds of the Lord. For indeed, ‘he was wounded for our transgressions’. What sin so deadly that cannot be absolved by the death of Christ? If then I call to mind such a powerful and efficacious remedy I can no longer be terrified by any disease no matter how virulent.

                The mercy of the Lord is, then, my merit. I am never bereft of merit as long as he is not bereft of mercy. For if the mercies of the Lord are many, then many are my merits. But what if I am aware of my many sins? Then, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And if the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting, then I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. And what of my own righteousness? ‘Lord, I shall be mindful only of your righteousness.’ For your righteousness is also mine since you have been made my righteousness by God”.  [cf. Office of Readings, Wednesday, Week 3 of the Year].    

                In the words of St. Augustine, our heart yearns for God and it is restless until it rests in Him. What truly is our yearning? ‘To be like Him and to see Him as He is’. This is the holy desire of every Christian, but for the present we cannot see him, therefore “let your efforts consist in desire” and the desire “gives you the capacity, so that when it does happen that you see, you may be fulfilled.” Therefore, like St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, we must stretch wide our heart and make it big enough to receive what is to come. St. Paul says: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made it his own...But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3: 12-13). 

                The essence of our Christian life is nothing else but to be exercised by holy desire, and we are exercised by holy desire only in so far as we have cut off our longings from the love of the world. In other words, we have to empty out the bad in order to be filled with the good: “Consider that God wants to fill you with honey, but if you are already full of vinegar where will you put the honey? What was in the vessel must be emptied out; the vessel itself must be washed out and made clean and scoured, hard work though it may be, so that it be made fit for something else, whatever it may be”.  That ‘something else’ is in fact ‘God’: “And when we say ‘God’ ... That one syllable contains all that we hope for. Whatever is in our power to say is less than he, let us stretch ourselves out towards him so that when he comes he may fill us.. ‘We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’”. [cf. Office of Readings, Friday, Week 6 of the Year].       

                May this Lenten Season be a time of grace for us because from the fullness of our Saviour ‘we have all received grace upon grace” (John 1: 16).

 Archbishop Anil J. T. Couto