February 22, 2015

Bulletin

1^st Sunday of Lent B Genesis 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Another Lent is here. En1graved in my head is the question from way back, ‘What am I going to do this Lent?’…an even older question is ‘What am I going to give up this Lent?’

Jesus went to the desert to pray. Lent is my desert, how much praying am I going to do? What constitutes my prayer? Do I find myself absorbed in prayer? Do I rattle off the same old prayers with conviction or just to get through them? I’m talking with God; that is prayer is all about. Am I listening to God? It’s so hard to listen when I don’t hear anything? Do I feel thrilled to be spending time with God? Do I feel I have to say something? As the years continue on, I see so many times I’m comfortable just in sitting. My dad would use the expression, ‘I’m just sitting reflecting on the inside of my eyes.’ Can I just sit with God?

So often I think back on my life and now I’m at the point when I think ahead. When I was younger I thought of what it would be like when I doubled my life years. When I was fifteen, I thought on what it would be like to be thirty. When I was thirty I wondered if I would make it to sixty. When I was fifty I changed the question to wonder what it would be like to be retired. Now my thoughts are different, many of them focus around the Lord: am I ready for the Lord…even is the Lord ready for me. The question that comes to me this Lent is: ‘How am I going to use the few years left to me?’

The great spiritual writer, Fr. Henri Nouwen in Here and Now, Living in the Spirit has helped me continually in his approach to living daily life. He says that our ‘clock time’ can become a huge obsession for us. Living in the ‘clock time’…chronos in Greek, “is based on the presupposition that our chronology is all we have to live. But looked upon from above, from God’s perspective, our clock time is embedded in the timeless embrace of God. Looked upon from above, our years on earth are not simply chronos but kairos – another Greek word for time – which is the opportunity to claim for ourselves the love that God offers us from eternity to eternity. And so our short lives, instead of being that limited amount of years to which we must anxiously cling, become that saving opportunity to respond with all of our hearts, souls, and minds to God’s love and so become true partners in the divine communion.”

So I take a new approach this Lent: it is not a chore, it is an honor. Lent is a time to realize that I am loved by God. I always have been loved by God. I have been loved by God even during those times when I did not like myself at all. I am loved in my sins; I am loved in my craziness. I am loved in my blah’s. I am loved in my unloving times. I am loved in my busyness. I am loved in those peaceful moments. I am just loved. So now I am what am I going to do?

Pope John XXIII in calling the 2^nd Vatican Council in 1962 said that this council was to ‘open up the windows’ to let in the sunshine and air. That’s a good image for me this Lent. Lent is calling me to redecorate the spiritual space in which I live. Lent is a time not to spend time in blaming others or to constantly apologize for me but to live in the love and mercy of God. Lent is a time to put myself in a place where God can tell me even more deeply about His love and His dreams for me. Can I allow this to happen? Why not…it’s what God does. The wonderful poet and spiritual person, Maya Angelou said that Lent is a time where each person is challenged “to mean what we are meant to be, to go where we are meant to go.”

This Lent is a time where I am going to look at my life and prepare myself for the next stage in my life, which is death. But my death is momentary because immediately I am living in the love and presence of this God ‘who is crazy in love with me just the way that I am’.

I return to Fr. Nouwen for his words on this subject. “How, then, do we prepared ourselves for death? By living each day in the full awareness of being children of God, whose love is stronger than death. Speculations and concerns about the final days of our life are useless, but making each day into a celebration of our belovedness as sons and daughters of God will allow us to live our final days, whether short or long, as birthing days. The pains of dying are labor pains. Through them, we leave the womb of this world and are born to the fullness of children of God.

John says it clearly: ‘My dear friends, you must see what great love the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God’s children – which is what we are! – we are already God’s children, but what we shall be in the future has not yet been revealed. We are well aware that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He really is’ (1 John 3:1-2).

By claiming what we already are, we best prepare ourselves for what we shall be.”

So often it seems that I do not pay attention to God’s love, but He is loving me every minute. My death is my full coming home to that love. Why do I hesitate in coming home to that love? Paul writing to the Philippi put it so beautifully, “For to me life is Christ, and death is gain. If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. And I do not know which I shall choose. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit.” (Philippians 1: 21-24)

Lent is a time for me to reflect on God’s love, to realize that I am called to love and to spend time living and reflecting on that love of God.

So I reflect on:

• I take some time and reflect on why I think that Jesus went into the desert to find quiet time to pray.
• I look at my desert places, where I go to withdraw from the world and put my spiritual life in order. What holds me back from visiting these places more frequently?
• Do I spend good quality time attending to my spiritual needs?
• Am I comfortable with long quiet times where God can have an opportunity to speak to me?

Sacred Space 2015 shares these thoughts:

“Mark’s gospel depicts Jesus as divine but also deeply human. He enters the wilderness for one purpose only: to find God, to seek God, and to belong to Him totally. Only then does He come into Galilee and proclaim the good news.

Lord, come with me into my wilderness. Speak to my preoccupied heart. Reveal to me where addictions to power, possession, and gratification choke my path. Only when I am free from these can I be good news to others.”