+ We have two powerful readings for our Lenten Mass this Monday
of the First full week of Lent. And they are not only powerful but potentially
effective if we take them to heart and put them into practice.
They are about
commandments and responsibility; they are about you shall, you shall not – they
are about loving and taking care of one another because you have been loved and
cared for first.
In the Book of Leviticus,
we are told by Moses – as if we were the children of Israel – which we are by
spiritual ancestry – “Be holy, for the
Lord is holy and he is not only commanding, but empowering you to be so.” God
never asks us to do anything that he does not likewise empower us to do.
An what an
empowerment this is: the power to live, speak, act like a caring, compassionate
human being in relationship to self, others, God and nature. “You shall love
your neighbor as yourself,” – says the Lord God.
In the gospel passage
Jesus spells the same lesson out in other words: you are most identified as my
sheep to be gathered on my right, rather than goats sorted on my left, when you
actually and literally take care of one another by “feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the
stranger wherever and whenever you see them, clothing the naked, visiting and
tending the sick both physically and spiritually, and visiting the imprisoned
and the confined, detained and forgotten.”
When you do these
things an unimagined experience of eternal blessedness and reward is waiting
you.
And so, on this day
of Lent, we are invited to orient ourselves towards other people, in God’s
name, and for his sake, rather than our selves and our petty wants and needs.
God will take care of us, to the extent that we take care of others. This is an
infallible spiritual axiom and truth.
We are also obliged
however, to pray for those goats heading for the left hand of Jesus on judgment
day – we are asked to pray for their conversion, their reversion, and their
transformation once again into loving, adorable sheep – and this goes from
those on our doorsteps, to the governing potentates set in place over us for
the express purpose of ensuring our freedoms, and our values, and our
conscience-informed priorities and perspectives.
Your word, Lord, are Spirit and Life – they are the only
antidote to the ills the plague us in our day!
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