Reflection
Lent reminds us to search out where our real commitment lies, to continue pushing up against the horizons of our awareness. It is a time for looking beneath the surface. Lent calls us to put our preconceived notions of the truth and our prepackaged ideas of the good aside. It asks us to be disciplined enough to let go of our outmoded values and let the Spirit renew us. In the past we considered penance a matter of self-abnegation and the denial of a particular enjoyment. Now, we can view it as a turning back toward God to receive the insights for a renewal of the focus of our lives.
Prayer
Give me back the joy of your salvation,
and a willing spirit sustain in me.
Psalm 51: 14-17
Action
Are there any areas in your life that need a new focus? In your prayer turn to God with an open mind and a receptive heart.
Suggested Reading
Jesus answered and said to him, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:3
But if you seek your God, you will find God if you look with all your heart and with all your soul.
Deut. 4:29
And we Christians who want to imitate Christ, we are invited to be open to change. In the life of faith and in relationships with others, people need to pay attention and to be willing to soften up in the name of compassion and the good of others, like Jesus did with the Canaanite woman.
Pope Francis
Another proof of the turning toward Christ will be found in a real change of life. If someone does not live differently from before, both at home and abroad, this repentance needs to be repented of and this conversion is a fiction.
Charles Spurgeon
All mature religion is somehow talking about finding your God self, your Christ self, your Buddha self, your Sufi dance. And when it happens, you know it was not a “change” after all, but a wondrous discovery and constant rediscovery of what was always true anyway.
Richard Rohr
We all know that life is lived in seasons. We go through periods of time when something in us must die so that something new can be born. We must grieve what has marred our past so that we can give birth to what is yet to come, the “awe” that is unfolding. Lent reminds us of these past seasons — that for every resurrection there is a death, and for every death a resurrection.
Joanne Fogarty, OSF
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau
I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.
Georg C. Lichtenberg