A Thought For Lent...Or Any Other Time

A thought for Lent...
OR ANY
OTHER TIME

THE CHRISTIAN MESSAGE has remained essentially the same down the centuries, but in our time it is having trouble making itself heard.


WHEN THE APOSTLES approached the pagans in the early days of the Church, their approach was straightforward: "Your lives are not what they should be. And you know it. So repent, reform, be baptized and give your day a great new meaning!" This concise and coherent message was truly "Good News to many people living in a world of many gods, human sacrifices and general brutality. And they responded, and the Christian religion brought great happiness and meaning to their lives.


IN OUR TIME we have another problem. Sometimes the question is asked:" Why is it that the Gospel - "the Good News" - seems to have lost its impact for Christians and most strikingly for Catholics? Why? Because before we preach the "Good News" we must first preach the Bad News: people are defective, sinful, have deformed lives and badly need to repent and begin all over again. AND SO THE CHURCH finds herself in a species of bind: nobody wants to listen to the Bad News because nobody wants to listen to bad news anyway, but also because people today are far from ready to admit that their lives need reforming - rather the opposite. They will tell us preachers of the Bad News to go and preach to ourselves - and feel very righteous about it. So we fall back on a message about the mercy of God which is good, because "Mercy" is God's middle name. But we cannot have mercy only. And does the practice of the Mercy of God Devotion not include also a good Confession? Back to square one. WE HAVE COME to Lent once again. In itself Lent is just a means to an end: a fast in preparation for the Feast of Easter. But we cannot reach the end without the means. If there is no preparation there can be no rejoicing. If there is no study you fail your exam. What has been happening in recent decades seems to be a variation of the old Roman custom: feasting followed by vomiting, promiscuity followed by abortion, dishonesty followed by further dishonesty and cover-ups - until the cover is blown as has been happening in recent times. In the end, all principles of right and wrong are forgotten. BUT CHRIST took it for granted that people do wrong - very wrong. And until people today
take it for granted that they are doing wrong, they simply will never be able to make
sense of Christ or his consoling message.


UNLESS THERE IS AWARENESS of personal sin, people find less and less reason for religion. STEP 1 - why ask for forgiveness, if there is nothing to forgive? STEP 2: - why turn to God at all? STEP 3: I myself AM God and what I think is the measure of right and wrong!


HOW DID WE GET into this crazy lack of awareness? It was a gradual process. About 40 years ago the news magazines began publishing articles about the "new permissiveness" - perhaps especially among Catholics who were happily being "liberated" by misinterpretations of Vatican Council 2. At that stage it was still news - all the ties had not yet been broken. Then came the so-called "breakthroughs" (might be much better named "breakdowns"): plays and movies with lewd speech and action. Words that good people rarely said in private and never in public, became commonplace. Protests were shouted down or ridiculed as being out of touch. It was an adolescent world - coming of age in just the wrong way - and, as parents have to live with turbulent teenagers, so the so-called "conservatives" had to live with these overgrown "teenagers" of the seventies.


AT THIS STAGE, the very liberating theory of "social" sins and "social" guilt began to be floated. YOU AND I are not to blame for what is going wrong in our lives. NO! SOCIETY is the culprit. Our BACKGROUND is the culprit.. Our DEFECTIVE GENES are what's wrong with us. We picked the WRONG GRANDPARENTS ... In a word: EVERYONE is to blame except us. Human nature can adapt to almost anything at the physical level and it appears the human conscience is equally adaptable to almost anything at the moral level. BUT JESUS took the opposite view. In an age when the people were satisfied with observing external correctness, he warned about loose THOUGHTS. In an age when DIVORCE was actually written into the Law ... he condemned it! In an age when hardly anyone remained unmarried ... he practiced celibacy." He laid it on the line: " if your tight eye is your downfall, pluck it out . . . if your hand is your difficulty, cut it off! No mention there of "social" sins or the sins of our fathers.


THEN THERE WAS the second way we lost awareness of sin: "Everybody's doing it." There's safety in numbers ... or is there? If all the pupils in your school fail their exam . . . perhaps the questions were too difficult. But then you hear that in another school 90% passed . . . numbers alone are not enough. If most of your friends no longer go to Mass regularly . . . does this make missing Mass acceptable? If many of your friends are sleeping around . . . does this make sleeping around acceptable? If some of your workmates are stealing regularly from the firm ... is it also ok for you to steal? The civil law doesn't say: thousands are breaking the speed-limit. Let's abolish it! The civil law doesn't say: tens of thousands are on drugs - let's make drugs legal (actually, as evidence that the breakdowns have by no means ended, marijuana is gradually making its legal way from State to State - how will that benefit society?).


FINALLY THERE IS A THIRD WAY we lose our awareness of sin: let's forget about it. Not so fast! Time heals everything? No. Time heals the MEMORY of what we did wrong but REALITY remains unchanged. As detection-methods improve, crimes of even forty years ago are being solved today and, whether we forget them or not, our crimes of many years ago are still there to accuse us. The physical event is long past. The spiritual and the necessity to straighten out the record will never change.


LETS STOP FOOLING OURSELVES No, not YOU, good member of the Institute, but rather your wayward sons and daughters, in-laws and out-laws, fourth cousins once removed, it's agonizing and heart-breaking for almost all of us - including me- to see our nearest and dearest making the greatest mistake of their lives: missing out on the amazing plans the Lord has made for them: an eternity of happiness after a life on earth, which - ironically - will be all the happier the more it is lived according to the Lord's love and concern. PRAY FOR THEM that they think of the past - at least once in a while. That's not done as often as it should be. Even when people go to Confession. "How long has it been? Oh, about thirteen years, Father." "And can you recall something special from those years?" "Well, no, Father. I'm divorced, of course, but it's perfectly legal. And now I'm much happier." "Do you go regularly to Mass? " "Yes, Father, during the school year with the kids but at other times I just can't make it'. . ." And on and on.


WE ARE OFTEN ASKED to put the past behind us. A good piece of advice but not where past sins are concerned - very dangerous advice. In their lifetimes all people do good and for that the Lord will reward them. But they also commit sin: the sins of youth, the sins of mature years, the sins of advancing years, sins of thought, of word, of action, of omission. Sins perhaps for which they walked free before the law but are still to be accounted for before God. Will those huge numbers out there - who are quite unaware that Lent has come or what it might mean - see Lent 2012? What question is more important to answer? What prayer can we say for them that is more merciful?