Lent: A Special Time of Grace
Lent is a Holy Season, a period in which we should live with greater consciousness of our relationship with God, self and others. We associate lent with fasting, abstaining from meat, fish fry, and doing more devotions. These are part of the usual effort to change our lives during this period of grace. But lent is much more than simply fasting; lent is a liturgical season that calls us with greater urgency to look at how our lives have been going, and how we far our hearts have gone away from the source of our lives: God!
There are two broad ways open to us every moment: the way of light, love, forgiveness, generosity, selflessness. This way leads to true life and peace in oneself and in others. The other way is the way of darkness, hate, divisions, stinginess, exploitation, revenge, resentment. This way leads to disorder and death in oneself and in others. Whether we know it or not, we follow either way through the choices we make, and every choice truly matters no matter how apparently insignificant it is. Whether we are aware of it or not, our choices lead us to either of the two ways. Lent is a time to examine very intensely with heightened attention which direction our choices and decisions lead us.
These two ways express alignment or misalignment to the Divine Will. God guides our lives and the whole world with love and in love. It is love that is the essence and foundation of life, for God is love itself. Whenever we choose and act in love, we promote joy, happiness, and life itself; we become co-creators with God, establishing order and life. The reason is because, in choosing to love and act in love, we are aligning ourselves to God’s heart of love, which directs persons and the whole world with love. On the other hand, when we choose to act in hate, revenge, resentment, or selfishness, we promote darkness, self-protection and death, because we are off the alignment with Divine Order which is built on love.
That is why we are presented in this First Sunday of Lent with the temptations of Jesus for meditation. In every temptation, Our Lord chooses God’s will which brings love and life. As this season progresses, we see how his choice of God’s will even leads him to death on the cross. Choosing God always can bring us in a head-on collision with the selfish values of the world. But we should not back away when that moment comes.
Lent is therefore a season that calls for a heightened consciousness of our relationship with God, with our deepest selves, and with others. The spirit of lent is that of putting our house in order, looking at our interior life, stepping back and examining how and where our desires and choices are leading us. At the end of Lent, we should be able, by God’s grace, to gain deeper insight into the confusions that often besiege our hearts; and we should be able to realize how and where we have been entrapping ourselves in sadness, paralysis, darkness and unlived life. Then, with the Risen Lord, we rise to a new life, with graced disposition to choose and act in conformity with Divine Will. This is the foundation of all genuine peace, joy and love. May this Lenten Period be for you a time of deepened knowledge of yourself, God and others; may it be a period of true religious experience for you and your family. Amen
Fr Cornelius Okeke