Pastor's Pondering February 26th
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February 27, 2023At ordination, every deacon and priest promises to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day. The prayers, which are centered on the Psalms, are meant to be prayed to make holy every part of the day. A part of this prayer is called the Office of Readings. Along with the Psalms, this “hour” includes a passage of scripture and a reflection, homily, or writing by great church teachers.
As I recently prayed the Office, I came across a quote, as I often do, that made me pause and start thinking. The quote, from St. Augustine was on the surface, obvious, but considering the season we are entering was also profound.
God means to fill each of you with what is good; so cast out what is bad! If he wishes to fill you with honey and you are full of sour wine, where is the honey to go? The vessel must be emptied of its contents and then be cleansed. Yes, it must be cleansed even if you have to work hard and scour it. It must be made fit for the new thing, whatever it may be.
The season of Lent, with its sacrifices, disciplines, prayers, and almsgiving is a season of hard work. It is a season of emptying and scouring. We do not just give things up or take on disciplines simply to follow the traditions of the church. Instead, this is the season in which we ready our minds, our bodies, our souls, our entire selves to receive the gift of salvation that is gained for us through the Paschal Sacrifice.
Because we are in the world, we can become full of many unhealthy things. We can be filled with greed as we pursue what this world tells us we need to be happy. We can be filled with envy as we see our neighbors gathering these things while we cannot. We can become filled with pride as we tick off every box that determines success in our culture. We can be filled with rage and anger because of perceived slights, or even deliberate hurt. Without going on and on, without even trying, we can become filled with an abundance of clutter that weighs us down and leaves precious little space or time for the good that God wants to fill us with.
Despite being in the world, we Christians are not of the world. God, from the very moment of creation has desired to fill us with good things. It wasn’t long before we, Adam and Eve, began to fill the space meant for good with lessor things. And we have followed their example. But we need not loose hope or despair. Instead through the hard work of Lent, through the new example set by Jesus we know what we must do to be filled with every good thing God desires to give us.
Like Jesus, we must commit ourselves to seeking the will of the Father and to doing it with generosity and joy. In committing to this we remove the clutter of confusion about what leads to holiness and what simply leads to another search. Following the example of Jesus, we see humility and service as ways of emptying our hearts and minds of the sour wine that is greed and envy. Heeding the commandment of Jesus to love our neighbor and our enemy we eliminate the crushing weight of anger and revenge.
Perhaps an underappreciated goal of Lent is to align the way we live to the way Jesus live, to commit ourselves to loving as Jesus loves. We are indeed told by Jesus we who follow him will be required to take up our crosses. We see that on the cross he empties himself so that we can be filled with grace, that we can be set free from sin, that we may share richly in the gift of salvation. How then during this season of Lent can we allow our crosses to help us to rid ourselves of that which is preventing us from receiving the good things God wants to give us? By following the example of Jesus, by heeding his teaching, by listening to his Word, by receiving his precious body and blood, by loving as he loves.
As St. Augustine tells us, preparing ourselves to receive the good things that God has to offer is hard work. It requires us to clean out and scour away what is taking up all the space in our lives. It requires us to rid ourselves of stuff we may have become comfortable with, things that present us as successful by the world’s standards, relationships that are not leading us to holiness. Emptied of these unhealthy things we will indeed be ready to receive the honey of God’s grace, the gold of his love, the freedom of his mercy and forgiveness, and the joy of spending eternity in beauty beyond our imagination.
