Day 4: The Only Necessary Thing

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Saturday After Ash Wednesday

When he went out after this, he noticed a tax collector, Levi by name, sitting at the tax office, and said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything Levi got up and followed him. Luke 5:27-28

Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus' ministry is to bring us to the house of his Father. Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death, he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life. It is difficult for us to imagine what this means. We tend to emphasize the distance between Jesus and ourselves. We see Jesus as the all-knowing and all-powerful Son of God who is unreachable for us sinful, broken human beings. But in thinking this way, we forget that Jesus came to give us his own life. He came to lift us up into loving community with the Father. Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus' ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given for us to receive.

"Being in the world without being of the world." These words summarize well the way Jesus speaks of the spiritual life. It is a life in which we are totally transformed by the Spirit of love. Yet it is a life in which everything seems to remain the same. To live a spiritual life does not mean that we must leave our families, give up our jobs, or change our ways of working; it does not mean that we have to withdraw from social or political activities, or lose interest in literature and art; it does not require severe forms of asceticism or long hours of prayers. Changes such as these may in fact grow out of our spiritual life, and for some people radical decisions may be necessary. But the spiritual life can be lived in as many ways as there are people. What is new is that we have moved from the many things to the kingdom of God. What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our hearts on the only necessary thing. What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us.

Our Prayer

Lord, whoever serves you,

must follow you,

and your servant will be with you

wherever you are.

If anyone serves you,

your Father will honor him.

— After John 12:26

Day 3: The Descending Way

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Friday After Ash Wednesday

For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom. 8:38-39

The love of God has become visible in Jesus. How is that love made visible through Jesus? It is made visible in the descending way. That is the great mystery of the Incarnation. God has descended to us human beings to become a human being with us; and once among us, descended to the total dereliction of one condemned to death. It isn't easy really to feel and understand from the inside this descending way of Jesus. Every fiber of our being rebels against it. We don't mind paying attention to poor people from time to time; but descending to a state of poverty and becoming poor with the poor, that we don't want to do. And yet that is the way Jesus chose as the way to know God...

God's way can be grasped only in prayer. The more you listen to God speaking within you, the sooner you will hear that voice inviting you to follow the way of Jesus. For Jesus' way is God's way and God's way is not for Jesus only but for everyone who is truly seeking God. Here we come up against the hard truth that the descending way of Jesus is also the way for us to find God. Jesus doesn't hesitate for a moment to make that clear.

The mystery of God's presence can be touched only by a deep awareness of his absence. It is in the center of our longing for the absent God that we discover his footprints and realize that our desire to love God is born out of the love with which he has touched us. In the patient waiting for the loved one, we discover how much he has filled our lives already. Just as the love of a mother for her son can grow deeper when he is far away, just as children can learn to appreciate their parents more when they have left the home, just as lovers can rediscover each other during long periods of absence, so our intimate relationship with God can become deeper and more mature by the purifying experience of his absence. By listening to our longings, we hear God as their creator. By toughing the center of our solitude, we sense that we have been touched by loving hands. By watching carefully our endless desire to love, we come to the growing awareness that we can love only because we have been loved first and that we can offer intimacy only because we are born out of the inner intimacy of God himself.

In our violent times, in which destruction of life is so rampant and the raw wounds of humanity so visible, it is very hard to tolerate the experience of God as a purifying absence and to keep our hearts open to patiently and reverently prepare his way. We are tempted to grasp rapid solutions instead of inquiring about the validity of the questions. Our inclination to put faith in any suggestion that promises quick healing is so great that it is not surprising that spiritual experience are mushrooming all over the place and have become highly sought after commercial items. Many people flock to places and persons who promise intensive experience of togetherness, cathartic emotions of exhilaration and sweetness, and liberating sensations of rapture and ecstasy. In our desperate need for fulfillment and our restless search for the experience of divine intimacy, we are all too prone to construct our own spiritual events. In our impatient culture, it has indeed become extremely difficult to see much salvation in waiting.

But still . . . the God who saves is not made by human hands. He transcends our psychological distinctions between "already" and not yet," absence and presence, leaving and returning. Only in a patient waiting in expectation can we slowly break away from our illusions and pray as the psalmist prayed.

Our Prayer

God, you are my God, I am seeking you,

my soul is thirsting for you,

my flesh is longing for you,

a land parched, weary and waterless.

I long to gaze on you in the Sanctuary,

and to see your power and glory.

Your love is better than life itself,

my lips will recite your praise;

all my life I will bless you,

in your name lift up my hands;

my soul will feast most richly,

on my lips a song of joy and, in my mouth, praise.

On my bed I think of you,

I meditate on you all night long,

for you have always helped me.

I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings;

my soul clings close to you,

your right hand supports me.

— Ps. 63:1-8

Day 2: Choose Life

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Thursday After Ash Wednesday

Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of Yahweh your God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him; for in this your life consists. Deut. 30:19-20

A life of faith is a life of gratitude -- it means a life in which I am willing to experience my complete dependence upon God and to praise and thank him unceasingly for the gift of being. A truly eucharistic life means always saying thanks to God, always praising God, and always being more surprised by the abundance of God's goodness and love. How can such a life not also be a joyful life? It is the truly converted life in which God has become the center of all. There gratitude is a joy and joy is gratitude and everything becomes a surprising sign of God's presence.

Whenever Jesus says to the people he has healed: "Your faith has saved you," he is saying that they have found new life because they have surrendered in complete trust to the love of God revealed in him. Trusting in the unconditional love of God: that is the way to which Jesus calls us. The more firmly we grasp this, the more readily will be able to perceive why there is so much suspicion, jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, hatred, violence, and discord in our world. Jesus himself interprets this by comparing God's love to the light. He says:

.. though the light has come into the world

people have preferred

darkness to light

because their deeds were evil.

And indeed, everybody who does wrong

hates the light and avoids it,

to prevent his actions from being shown up;

but whoever does the truth

comes out into the light,

so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done

in God.

Jesus sees the evil in this world as a lack of trust in God's love. He makes us see that we persistently fall back on ourselves, rely more on ourselves than on God, and are inclined more to love of self than to love of God. So we remain in the darkness. If we walk in the light, then we are enabled to acknowledge in joy and gratitude that everything good, beautiful, and true comes from God and is offered to us in love.

Our Prayer

O God, you are not far from any of us,

since it is in you that we live,

and move, and exist.

You, who have overlooked the times of ignorance,

let everyone everywhere be told

that they must now repent.

-- After Acts 17:27-28, 30

Day 1: Repent and Live

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Ash Wednesday

I shall judge each of you by what that person does -- declares the Lord Yahweh. Repent, renounce all your crimes, avoid all occasions for guilt. Shake off all the crimes you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why die, House of Israel? I take no pleasure in the death of anyone -- declares the Lord Yahweh -- so repent and live! Ezekiel 18:30-32

The Lenten season begins. It is a time to be with you, Lord, in a special way, a time to pray, to fast, and thus to follow you on your way to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, and to the final victory over death. 

I am still so divided. I truly want to follow you, but I also want to follow my own desires and lend an ear to the voices that speak about prestige, success, human respect, pleasure, power, and influence. Help me to become deaf to these voices and more attentive to your voice, which calls me to choose the narrow road to life.

I know that Lent is going to be a very hard time for me. The choice for your way has to be made every moment of my life. I have to choose thoughts that are your thoughts, words that are your words, and actions that are your actions. There are no times or places without choices. And I know how deeply I resist choosing you.

Please, Lord, be with me at every moment and in every place. Give me the strength and the courage to live this season faithfully, so that, when Easter comes, I will be able to taste with joy the new life that you have prepared for me. Amen.

God's mercy is greater than our sins. There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but rather to self-preoccupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failings and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says: "I am too sinful to deserve God's mercy." It is the guilt that leads to introspection instead of directing our eyes to God. It is the guilt that has become an idol and therefore a form of pride. Lent is the time to break down this idol and to direct our attention to our loving Lord. The question is: "Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God's mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?" The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God's mercy.

Our Prayer

Faithful God, trusting in you,

we begin

the forty days of conversion and penance.

Give us the strength for Christian discipline,

that we may renounce evil

and be decisive in doing good.

We ask this through Jesus Christ.