98: The power of Lent

The Grace of Lent Tide

It is of utmost important to understand the changes that happen at the beginning of Lent, throughout it, until we reach Easter Sunday.

Lent starts with a ritual of great humility: having some ashes put on our forehead, often in the form of a Sign of the Cross, accompanied by a word from the Priest that invites us to embark on the Journey of spiritual combat and warfare.

All the Community gathers humbly that day, in order to receive the Seal of that starting point. It is not a sacrament, but it is a sign of a deep grace, “the grace of Lent”. During that intense time of Lent, God seems to double His Grace for us. If during the year He seems to lean more on us, i.e. on the results of our last Lenten period and Easter Grace, during Lent He seems to redouble His grace in order for us to dig deeper. Our journey is a journey of spiritual growth, transformation, sanctification and it goes in circles, but at each turn we go deeper, like a helix (coil); each year, we go up a gear, and Lent is the moment when we change gear. This is why it is important to live Lent fully. In order to do so we need to become aware that God is giving us this redoubled Grace.

Doubling His Grace

Often we call Lent a “time of conversion”, and conversion means to leave creatures, abandon them, and go toward the Creator. Right? Of course it is about opening ourselves (because of God and with God) as well to God in our brothers and sisters. It is still “conversion”.

I would like to focus on another word: a spiritual deepening.

Turning to God, to Jesus is fundamental. But it is important not only to turn to Him, as if the rest of the whole year were spent away from Him, but to go deeper in our relationship with Him. And God's Providence sets up for us this very special time of Grace called Lent.

Discovering/deepening Friendship with Jesus

One of the great ways/means that God uses to reach us in Lent is through the abundance and power of His Word. Scripture is here to help us deepen our relationship with God. Let us remember that we are constantly crossing from one state to another: from the state of a Slave who doesn't know the will of his Master to a Friend who gets to know the will, feelings, behaviour of his Friend. That's a change and a half I would say. Who changes us? Who transforms us? Jesus' Word for us. This is why the main and first activity of Lent is to sit down, take time to listen to Jesus, preferably on a daily basis, in order to undergo this deep change.

The powerful grace of Lent is here to help give us a little push in order to sit down, be quiet, pray, ask and beg in order to listen to the word of our Friend, Jesus, who wants to share with us his thoughts. This can't happen without the Help of the redoubled Grace of the Holy Spirit. So imagine God, from on high, doubling the amount of the Holy Spirit he is pouring out.

Mary the Mother of Our New Heart

One person we hardly mention during Lent is Mary, while often the Feast of the Annunciation occurs during Lent and this is very meaningful. Why? Because the Annunciation is the embodiment of the renewed Grace of Lent, where we sit down, and want to listen to Jesus, to God, to his word. In Lent God wants to renew our heart, he removes some stony parts of our heart to put more human flesh into it. This human part comes out of Mary's Oven, where the Holy Spirit works renewing us. We need to seek the new heart, and this new heart is at the image of Mary's heart, even more: it is made by the Holy Spirit in her womb.

Let us listen to the description of this deep operation that God performs in us cyclically in our life, during Lent: “For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:24-27)

The Holy Spirit Gathers Us Up

God “gathers” us, this is the Grace of Lent. If you keep quiet you'll sense this discreet increase in the Grace of God, and will start to sense in which sense it goes: it gathers us up. Not “all of us”, but all the parts of our being. In fact we are divided by all that attracts us outside, our energy is scattered here and there. The Grace of God “gathers us”.

It Gathers us closer to God... who dwells in us. And in order to do so, in order to get us closer to us, it has to make us bear more of a resemblance to God: we need a new heart, a heart of flesh moved by the Spirit of God.

How does this happen? With the Powerful guidance of the Word of God. We are rational beings, we have a mind, and this mind guides us everyday. But is the light of the mind purely a natural light? Are all the thoughts and desires that move us from God? Are they inseminated by God's Light? It is very important to understand that the best thing that can happen to us is to receive the Word of God's light in our mind, heart, feelings, imagination, visions and dreams. It is like allowing the Sun to rise on the land of our mind.

A person who never allowed the Light of the Sun to shine on his land can't imagine the difference. This is why God gives us a redoubled grace during Lent to bring us from the land of darkness (our mind left alone) to the land of the Sun, Jesus, where the soil of our Mind is inseminated by the Light of the Word of God. This is a unique experience that shows us that the Lord is not only Risen, but that he is living amongst us.

Without the Holy Spirit, this experience can't happen.

Not guiding, but Being Guided

In Lent we are constantly crossing from being without a Guide to having a Guide, a Shepherd, Jesus himself. We often live our life being the boss of ourself, even if we are Christians and very committed Christians. We are the boss of ourselves. This is not correct. We do even manage Jesus, and tell him where we are going, and he has to make it work, otherwise we will get upset with Him. We take him in our car, beside us and we hold the driving wheel, decide, drive, and he has to sit quietly and make it happen. Is that normal? Not at all. We need to discover this new way of doing things: having him as our real guide, learning to sense him (with the spiritual senses that the Holy Spirit make grow in us), to listen to him, to prefer him, to be patient for the right moment, to allow Him to guide us, and be happy for being with him having him as our only Treasure in life.

Jesus' Love

It is not only about being guided by Jesus, but learning to enter deeper into Jesus himself, discovering his love for us and learning that new reality: that life is worth it because of him because of having him as our unique love. We then start to learn how to love him “with all our heart, all our mind, all our strength”. Loving Him in himself, and not loving him because of what we can get of him. He is not only our Creator, not only our Redeemer, he is our love, the only love, the one that gives meaning to our lives.

Under Jesus' Guidance

As we said, in order to be under his guidance, we need to sit down, and be quiet, ask for the Help of the Holy Spirit, open the Word of God on today's pages (the Reading of the Mass). What will the word of Jesus do to us? Well it will change us from the old creature (old man) to the new creature, made by Jesus on the Cross, coming out of his side, coming out of Mary's womb.

The Word of God, meditating on the Word of God, being in the presence of Jesus, allowing His word to enter within us, we discover its operation: it removes the masks, the fancy dress (costume, disguise) we are wearing, and brings truth into our lives. It removes this double life in us, the inner one and the outer one. The word of God pierces the surface of the outer skin we put on and reaches the depths of our being, our heart, touches us, and makes our heart blossom under the action of the Grace of the Holy Spirit, make us take one step forward in the unification of our being (inner and outer).

The spiritual Senses

One of the most important characteristic of the new way of life with Jesus is the growth in us of “spiritual senses”. This reality is often mentioned by the Fathers of the Church and the Mystics. In fact, our new inner being develops under the new Action of the Holy Spirit. Our new being, received in Baptism and in Confirmation, wakes up, and develops in a specific way: new senses develop in our inner being and their function is to allow us to listen, see and sense Jesus in our lives. Our soul, as the image of our body, develops new capacities, senses, antennas, that allow us to receive Jesus' Spirit (the Holy Spirit), inner guidance. Indeed, our new inner Master is the Holy Spirit: He explains to us Jesus' words, He reminds us at the right time of Jesus' words, He connects us with Him, He gives to our conscience new senses, making us “feel” Jesus' emotions, desires, and guidance.

Lent time, being the time where we deepen our relationship with Jesus, is the time where the Holy Spirit develops our inner being. It is important to take him as our real inner Master and listen to Him, or better said: ask him to help us hear Jesus' words, sense and follow His guidance.

Certainly that deeper opening toward Jesus will open us to his body: our brothers. We can't claim to love him if we neglect him in our brothers and sister. So a greater attention to him in them will increase.

Which Direction?

Where would this new faithfulness to Jesus take us? It will make us much more docile and flexible to Jesus' will and guidance. It will make us more humane. It will help us fulfil our normal daily duties in a better way. In fact, it is not leading us astray on a new and strange/unknown path, I mean in the daily basis of our tasks. We will still have 24 hours/day to live, we will still sleep 6-7-8 hours a day, we will still eat, rest and meet our friends, we will still work, have the same duties at home, but paradoxically everything will change. The exterior frame might not change (it might!) but the interior frame will change. It is like when you fall in love: you have somebody in your life. This person is with you all the time, makes the sun brighter and the evening more beautiful. It gives you a new taste, a new meaning. Wouldn't you call this: happiness? A long lasting one? A real one? Yes, indeed.

Conclusion: The Power of Lent

Is Lent doing all this in our life? Can it?? Welcome Lent, welcome the Grace of Lent!

In fact, the core of Lent is Jesus; He is doing all this. His Passion, Death and Resurrection does all this. Lent is a series or Graces we receive, that will prepare us to receive the Big Grace of going in a new way through the Passion-Death-Resurrection of the Lord. We will then be able to Rise more with him and in him.

Let us thank God for increasing his grace in us in Lent, let us embrace Lent, let us be unified by its grace and unique purpose: getting closer to Jesus.

92: St James explains Lectio divina 2

In the second chapter of his letter (James 2:14-26), St James continues to explain to us Lectio divina is.

The act of faith is to receive a word

What is faith? Our understanding today of “faith” might not be the one meant in various passages in the Bible. Plus, each author in the Bible, makes some aspect of “faith” shine. So we might feel that we have different versions of the same topic, but in fact these are only different angles that allow us to grasp better that spiritual reality of faith and of its act.

For many authors of the Bible, faith is an act that allows us to receive a Word from God, and to put it into practice. By this act, we open ourselves to God’s word/message, and we offer for it a space in us (in our existence, in our body, our soul,..), so that that word can “become flesh” in us.

The best example that illustrates the act of faith is Mary in the Annunciation. The Angel of God is transmitting to Mary a Word from God, a Message from God. Mary doesn’t immediately say “yes”, bypassing her mind. On the contrary she makes the effort, with her mind, to understand what that Message clearly means, discovering by doing so, her exact part in allowing the word of God to become flesh in her heart and in her flesh. Only then she says: yes, here I am, with all my being, offered to God, and to this word that He uttered to me.

For this reason, Mary is praised, and Zechariah is blamed. The exact reason why Mary is called “blessed” is because she believed that if God utters a word (a message) He can fulfil his Word : “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1:45) The Angel Gabriel explains to her the exact point of Faith: “no word [uttered by God] is impossible, to [be realised by] God". (Luke 1:37). The majority of the translations say: “for nothing is impossible to God”, which is not what the text says and is not Luke’s purpose: in fact he wants to explain the mechanism of Faith.

How faith is transmitted to us

By Jesus’ Redemption on the Cross, we receive the Grace of Faith i.e. the capacity to open up to the Word of God. By Jesus’ Redemption, Mary was able to say “yes” to the Angel (see the Mystery of the Immaculate Conception). By Jesus’ Redemption, and through his Plan, he wanted Mary to be altogether our Role model (Archetype of the perfect Disciple of Jesus) and our Mother (the one that generates us into God’s Life). Jesus made Mary and Mary’s “yes” (all her “Yes”) capable of holding our “yes”. By the “Yes” of Mary, we receive the Grace, in our turn, to hear a Word coming from God, understand our part in its incarnation, and say “yes” to it, like Mary, and in Mary. This is the full extent of the Act of Faith. This is why Mary is praised this way: “Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42) (we are all, by through her, capable of conceiving God’s will, a word from him each day). What do we conceive? “blessed is the fruit of your womb”: Jesus! This is why “all generations will call her blessed” (Luke 1:48). Because all generations will go to her (as our mother) to draw from her the capacity to receive the word of God (to believe, to have faith).

St James explains the act of Faith

God's word for us is to love God and to love our neighbour. So Faith will entail putting that word into practice. With this understanding of faith, let us read St James’ passage:

“What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works/acts? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:14-17)

Having faith itself (i.e. having the capacity to say “yes” to a word sent by God to us) is a grace. But exercising faith, is something that is essential. Faith is not passive. It is a grace, a Talent to be implemented, activated, invested in. Imagine Mary not saying “yes” to God, and not receiving him in her! The fact that she is “Immaculate Conception” gives her Faith the capacity to say “yes”, the capacity to “conceive the word” in her heart and in her womb. But if she doesn’t say yes, if she doesn’t use that faith, then nothing will happen. There is no fruitfulness.

If we don’t say “yes” to the word of God, if we do not receive into our life, in our flesh that “word”, if we don’t give it a space in us, what is then “faith”? Have we allowed the grace of faith to be enacted in us?

St James continues: “But some one will say, "You have faith and I have works/acts." Show me your faith apart from your works/acts, and I by my works/acts will show you my faith.” (James 2:18)

The act of Faith is the capacity to receive a word from God, to give it our flesh.

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -- and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works/acts is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works/acts, and faith was completed by works/acts, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness"; and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works/acts and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the harlot justified by works/acts when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.” (James 2:19-26)

Faith as a grace is something, and the act of faith is something different: it is to receive a word from God and “incarnate” it. “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of the word that was spoken to her from the Lord.” (Luke 1:45)

The total gift of ourselves to God

It is true as well, that one has to offer himself totally to God when he makes his act of Faith. Let us contemplate Mary: she doesn’t say an intellectual abstract “yes” to God. She commits totally to Him, she puts all her life into God’s hands, and commits to his Word. This is the condition that will allow the Word of God to come into her heart and into her womb.

In order to see God we need to give ourselves totally to God, and this is purity, a purity that we can enact (with the Grace of God).

If we “loose our lives” by giving it to God, we get everything: God, and all the rest. Seek the kingdom of God first, and all the rest will be given to you for free.

Purity is the condition of success of Lectio Divina: offering ourselves to God, completely, unconditionally,… this is the only way to receive God. If we give everything to him, we get everything (him).

Conclusion

Lectio divina is a real act of Living Faith where we listen to a word coming from God to us, where we offer ourselves to God totally and where God incarnates in us his word. Very much like the Annunciation.