As We Approach Lent

As we approach Lent
God and Us

Once again we approach another Lent - that important
time when we try to improve our relationship with God.

We speak every now and then of "worship," meaning that
we raise our hearts and minds to God to honor Him and
acknowledge our dependence on Him. But this
understanding to some extent misses the point: it puts the
emphasis on OUR action in turning to God. It says
nothing about the real action: God TURNING TO US.


In fact a better description of worship is to call it a "dialog"
between God and us in which God speaks first - as He
always does. Indeed, He always must. He takes the
initiative and He expects our reaction in the form of prayer
and praise - but also sometimes in the form of questions
or even complaints. The main thing is that there should be
SOME dialog, no matter what the quality. God is more
sensitive than we give Him credit for. Naturally, He is hurt
and sometimes outraged when we do wrong, but perhaps
He feels an even greater hurt when we ignore Him. Have
we not all seen our kindness forgotten, our gifts
unacknowledged if not actually rejected, our best efforts to
build harmony treated with contempt? Yes, we have, and
that is precisely what happens in almost every life in every
age. People have a thousand things to do but none of
them is related to God.

Actually, "dialog" does not involved only SPEECH. The
very WORD of God came on earth in the form of an active
human being who saved us not just by what he SAID but
also by what he DID - he was the Way, the Truth and the
Life. And so our response to this gracious Man cannot be
just words, sounds disappearing into thin air (even if we
call them "prayers") but must be an offer of our whole life
to him. St. Paul says the same thing when he exhorts the
Romans to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God (Rom 12, 1 - 2).

We call this sort of offering true worship or spiritual
worship - as contrasted with purely material statements
or even material actions having little or nothing to do with
our internal attitude which may be quite irreligious. Such
spiritual worship takes in ALL our life: our awareness of
ourselves, our relationships to others, our openness to the
problems of our time and our readiness to do something
about them. So we are talking about something much

greater than merely "saying" prayers or "singing" hymns.
These are part of "formal" worship. But true worship is
on-going and takes place all the time.

In this sense, our Pauline activity in the Church is equally
worship: handing on the faith, preaching the message of
salvation or doing anything else which in some way
contributes to this process - including, of course, our
support of it with our prayers.

In this sense the whole life of everyone is a form of
worship, sometimes clearly as when the individual leads a
good Christian life but also on other occasions when
people work to help others though they have no special
intention of worshiping God. In this case we are tempted to
say "They're paid for it." Perhaps, but it still requires a spirit
of sacrifice to work with certain gruesome illnesses, to
bear patiently with ungrateful people, to continue to render
service even when we are blamed more than praised.

Ideally, of course, they should have what call a "right
intention" but in the rough and tumble of an average day -
and perhaps even more in the dreary length of a workless
day common in our time - a loving God bends over them
constantly and is not offended if they officially deny Him or
work to repair - as they may say - the mess He has made
of the world. There will be surprises in heaven and some
of the most surprised may well be those people who were
far closer to God than they realized.

It is good to think of these realities as we move into the
time or season of Lent which for far too many is an
irrelevancy - one more series of signs and symbols clearly
indicating that the Church is dead but refuses to bur/
herself in some forgotten ditch. At most, they would

say, Lent is tolerable because of Easter and better
weather and vacation-time.

But they are wrong. It is in Lent that we underline a great
truth: the world belongs to God, not to people and He has
no intention of giving up on it not matter what people think
or say.

In fact, when we reflect on it, there is no real separation of
the sacred and the profane - God is present everywhere
and for Him everything and everyone is "sacred" meaning
"special" or "set aside" for a particular role in life. The car
companies make cars that nobody wants. God is a lot
smarter and nobody comes into the world without His
concurrence - even in the most desperate circumstances
such as, for example, because of a rape which is so
common today in countries torn apart by war and
revolution. The circumstances are wrong but the human
being involved is a child of God and has work to do in the
context of the enormous divine plan for humanity.

Because the world we live in often resembles a mad-
house, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," the
work of the Church, far from being marginal or irrelevant, is
in fact absolutely central because it enables the sincere
enquirer to make sense of so much that is apparently
senseless and out of control.

When we take the world as it is, sometimes good and
more often perhaps anything but good, - and by this we
mean accepting in faith the events and people we
encounter daily; if we see in these people God
approaching us, then we are really building that "new
world" we hear so much about but never seem to see
realized.


The "new world" everyone wants is not something material
we can build if we have enough money or the right plan.
No. It is actually the present world but approached
differently. Is it not true that even a proportion of the
money and materials scandalously wasted by
Governments would be more than sufficient to feed all the
world's starving people, to build proper living conditions, to
cultivate the available land and eliminate many diseases?
Yes, it is, and it shows that God has not failed His world:
His world - His people - have failed Him but that is not a
problem because His action is unstoppable and creative
and all human beings have to do is to reach out to God -
meaning, reach out to other people in whom God lives and
works.

If only we could be convinced of this simple truth: what the
world needs is the worship of God, not a superficial hour in
church on Sundays followed by a week spent exploiting
others, but rather a constant effort to see and serve Him
in others and, as a result, to see and serve Him honesty in
the weekly religious ritual.

This is not likely to happen any time soon. It all began in
the Garden when Adam and Eve ran away from God, each loudly blaming the other. Cutting God out of their lives they cut others out as well. In the next generation this was dramatically shown by the death of Abel and that was the beginning of all the pain and suffering in today's world.

But God has not given up on us - He can't. We are His
people, the flock He shepherds and among the scabby
sheep - and not a few wolves - He moves with great love
every day and every hour of the day. Let this Lent be a
time of greater reflection on our call to life and to the
Institute in which we serve Him and serve countless
others.


~ February 2011 Concord

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