One way to look at Lent is that it is the laundry time of the year. It is the season of soul cleaning. What needs scrubbing inside you? Just surface dirt? Stain that needs soaking? We’ve all got wounds from living, and wounds from living create the need for laundry for our souls.
In the first couple of weeks of Lent, the readings for mass, both on Sundays and during the week, give us prompts from God to identify what might need to be scrubbed off or rinsed out in us. This first Sunday, the readings set the stage. They call us to a place of vulnerability, for when we are vulnerable, we soften, and when we soften, we open, and when we open, we hope.
When we hope, we seek. When we seek, we find, because the seeking is a sign that God is already working in us. When we begin to seek—to thirst, to question, to wonder, even to argue—God is close and ready to guide us to come closer to Him if we ask with sincere hearts.
A Place of Vulnerability Mark 1:12-15
Jesus is in the desert. The Spirit drives him there. The Father has named his mission. Now it is time to prove to himself that he can do it.
What does it mean, the Spirit drives him there? God within him causes him to go to the desert. He has just been baptized. The heavens open then, and he hears the words, “This is my beloved Son.” Then the Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove. Jesus was fully divine and, so, at some level, that would make sense to him. But Jesus was also fully human, and having that experience would surely take some processing. What did that mean? How fascinating it would have been to be inside his head!
The descent of the Spirit when we perceive it can also be a discombobulating experience for us. Readers who have experience with charismatic Life in the Spirit seminars or who have attended Cursillo, ACTS, or other intense weekends know that perception of reception of the Holy Spirit can make the whole world new. It can disorient us.
God comes through the Holy Spirit in every Eucharist, every confession, every sacrament. My observation is that too often we do not perceive what we have been given. Without perception of God having come directly to us, and without perception of changes in ourselves, it seems a fair question to ask: Have I truly received-claimed-benefited from the grace given? Do I have unopened gifts from God?
If you don’t perceive the Presence of God with a resulting change in you when you receive a sacrament…well, maybe that is on your laundry list this Lent.
Jesus perceived what he had received. He needed time away. Satan, who must have witnessed Jesus’ baptism, is curious. He follows him to the desert. Jesus, vulnerable from living with the wild beasts, from the geography of desert, and from this new experience, now faces temptation.
Mark’s Gospel doesn’t detail the temptations like the other Gospels do. We have a very general picture today. I kind of like that. It makes it easier for me to consider: what is my place of vulnerability? For where I am vulnerable, I am soft, I am open, I hope…and that makes me a prime target for temptations as well as for new life in God.
So, I encourage you, notice. Where is your vulnerability? A relationship? A habit? A conflict? An imbalance? Anger? Confusion? Polarity? Too much news? A deadness or boredom? Resentment or unforgiveness?
That’s your desert. Meet Jesus there.
One thing about a desert: it’s dusty, gritty. Sand even gets in your mouth, your underwear, your socks. It’s everywhere. The desert leads you to want to get clean!!! Yes!!! The desert makes us all ready for this laundering season.
A Place of Love and Hope Genesis 9:8-15 & 1 Peter 3:18-22
Our first two readings remind us that this God we meet in the desert (who might scrub a little skin off) is a loving God who has loved his people for centuries. The story of Noah and the flood reminds us that God is not going to wash us away. He’s not going to “throw the baby out with the bath water.” No matter what we struggle with this Lent, God ISN’T GOING TO GIVE UP ON US. No sin is too great. No dullness of heart is too dead. As St. Peter says, Jesus descended to the dead after he was crucified to give all those people who were killed in the Great Flood of Noah’s time another chance. All those people and others who had not heard of Christ, all those who have died through the centuries. NO ONE is without hope in Christ. Jesus WANTS everybody to be with him.
We meet a loving God in Lent’s laundry room desert.
Discerning in the Desert
These thoughts give rise to how do we proceed to identify what needs to change in us this year and how do we do it. Good questions. Good answers to such questions take into account what we know of how God reveals Himself and how Satan tempts us.
God is Light. Sin is darkness. God’s leading will have a sense of Truth, Light. It will match Scripture and be compatible with the catechism. God’s leading causes us to go, “Aha!” with new understanding. God’s leading also always respects our freedom. God seeks for us to choose His Way. But we must always freely choose it, for God’s Way is a way of love, and love cannot be commanded. It is offered and must be accepted. (That, too, I think, is a reason we do not perceive and fully receive grace offered in sacraments. We grow dull from habit. So God comes and waits, ready to keep coming to us, but not willing to impose on us.)
As long as you are wandering around thinking this and that and the next thing, or stuck with the same worrisome thought again and again—God has not yet given you guidance which you have accepted.
True, Ignatian spirituality says that feeling troubled, if we are sinning, will come from God. But there’s a clarity and a thought of what to do about it, if it comes from God. If it leads to hopelessness, “I’m too broken,” “I can’t get out of this dilemma,” that is not God, but Satan tempting.
God is love, which means that God wills goodness—for you, for others, for all. In your struggles, where is goodness that you are sure of? Use that as a beginning point to discover where the goodness is in where you are unsure. Sometimes that path is hard to discern. You can be helped by confession, by Lenten practices, by talking with a spiritual friend, and by begging God to show you what He wants.
God’s love includes facing hard truths sometimes. It includes turning away from things that you come to realize are not as good as you thought. Sometimes God’s love pushes you to face wrongs you did long ago—or to forgive (or forgive again) wrongs done to you. God’s love, in my life, has changed me with feather gentleness—and with scrub brush strokes. Either way, if it is of God, it connects with goodness in you, in others, in God. It heals.
Use the Power of God’s Word
You might remember from other descriptions of Jesus temptations in the desert that he answered Satan each time with Scripture. The daily readings, through Friday, March 1, focus on what in you that might need a gentle swab or a scrub brush. Or, if you know, it can guide you in how to let it go. You won’t be guilty of everything, but some scriptures will stand out to you. Those are the ones that God uses to call you now, this Lent.
You can find the daily readings every day at the USCCB website, in multiple Lenten worship aids or in a book, such as Abide in My Word: Mass Readings at Your Fingertips. Go to daily mass this Lent if you can. When you can’t, read the readings and reflect on them: Does something call to you? What is God saying?
Laundry blessings!
Prayer
Lord, I know from experience that when I am vulnerable and open and ask You, You come to guide me. Sometimes you speak directly through Scripture, a homily, or reflection. Sometimes You come through a conversation or a chance meeting. You come. You come, too, in every Eucharist, every confession. Always make sure I am soft and open enough to recognize You. Give me humility and perception to see what you ask of me. Prod my will to do it. Protect me from myself: don’t let me think that my voice is your voice! Protect me from any and all voices within and without that would lead me away from You. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
