Peace be with you!

If Fr. Freeh had kept the DVD disks in his possession, he could’ve handed them to me this weekend. But the disks are in Illinois; we’re in Pennsylvania. And so I’m once again blogging solo.

Hard to believe this is the Fourth Sunday of Lent. I hope your Lenten journey is transforming your heart, bringing you closer to God.

The readings for this Sunday struck me with one phrase: “Use it or lose it.”

We either live in the light, building our spiritual lives through the worship of God in spirit and truth–or we fall into the dark, worshipping any god whose promises of pleasure and power lead us into sin. It’s odd to think of the spiritual life in such mundane terms, but it’s pretty clear that this dynamic works on both an individual and cultural level.

When the Jews turned away from God and His moral law, they fell into a deep, dark pit of idolatry and immorality. Having lost their sense of themselves as God’s chosen, they became the prey of their enemies. Exiled, they were stripped of their very identity–which is the natural consequence of losing their relationship with God.

Oddly, it was a Gentile–Cyrus, the King of Persia–who responded to God’s inspiration,  sending the Jews to their homeland, giving them back their identity as God’s chosen people, and calling them back to their purpose: to rebuild God’s Temple and consecrate themselves to the worship of God.

The story of the Jews’ Babylonian Exile is our own story.

As individuals, and as Church, Christians face the same temptations. The secular world offers us the easy path of glitz and glamor, of pleasure and power…never mentioning how we will become trapped in idolatry of greed, and lust, and violence. Worshipping the modern gods of hedonism, individualism, and minimalism, we trade in Truth for the tyranny of relativism, where there is no right and wrong…only opinions.

Every day, we see the consequences of forgetting God on our TVs, in our families, in our hearts. Lost to God, we have exiled ourselves from our own identity. Stripped of our true purpose  to know, love, and serve God, we become mere shadows of ourselves, little more than beasts. Access to pornography and “reproductive services” becomes more important than an outcry against sexual slavery.

And yet, there is hope. I don’t think of the Babylonian Exile as God’s punishment of the Jews. I think of it more as a removal of His mercy. And while there is always sin, and the consequences of sin, there is also God’s mercy…which is infinitely greater than our sins.

In fact, we live in a sea of God’s Divine Mercy, always around us, always available to us, even when we are “dead in our transgressions.” And here’s even better news: The consequences of repentance and calling upon God’s mercy are just as real as the consequences of sin.

This is the mercy that called the Jews back to the holy city; the mercy that calls us back to our best selves, and our culture back to the Judeo-Christian principles upon which we were founded. This is the mercy that gives peace despite strife; joy despite trial; healing despite injury. And the greater, glorious promise of  salvation and eternal life.

Our choice is clear: to make God the priority in our spiritual life, or to lose it altogether.

The key is to recognize our sinfulness. To see Christ raised up in the midst of this world, and to reject the darkness and step into the light of God’s mercy. And–living in the light–to be like Cyrus, the unlikely instrument of grace calling others back to their identity and purpose as the chosen children of God.

+ Ann

Readings for Fourth Sunday of Lent.

Readings for Fifth Sunday of Lent.