Our parish is preparing for a Women’s ACTS retreat the end of the month, and I am on the team. Part of my role on the team is to give a talk on my prayer life. February was spent reviewing that—the high points and low points through the years. The thread that runs true through the story of my life with God over the years is that turning points came when I made what I thought were small, not significant, decisions.
Such was a decision I made right before Lent in 2010. I had been struggling in my relationship with God—pretty much “not warm, not cold.” I was at a standstill. My professional career was at its height. I was traveling around teaching a relationship skills program and maintaining an active family therapy practice. I had good friends. My children were grown, and I was free to do much of what I pleased. I was healthy, active, and productive.
But dreams that had substantially come true were not satisfying. There was a restlessness in me, an angst, which I could neither pinpoint nor shake.
On Tuesday before Ash Wednesday I made decisions about what I would do for Lent. Nonchalantly, with little thought, I decided: I will return to a practice I had in my 20s; this Lent I will go to confession every two weeks—“whether I need it or not.” Each time I will do what I did before: I will name three things I do that seem wrong to me. I will see what happens.
In retrospect, I am very sure that God put those thoughts in my head that Tuesday morning, because God takes the lead in calling us to himself. But, at the time, I thought I was just doing what you are supposed to do before Lent: figure out how you are going to pray, fast, and give alms.
But I did it. I started going to confession every other Saturday. We had a new priest. I had been to him to confession at the Penance Service in Advent. He seemed OK, helpful.
Through the course of those confessions I made every other week in Lent, my life changed. Radically changed. Miss Mary, Tepid Water Personified, began to grow warm in her love for God again. Sunday mass stopped being an obligation I needed to fulfill. I began to actually LISTEN to the homilies. I began to look forward to going to church. In fact, by mid-Lent, I returned to the practice of attending daily mass, something I hadn’t done for fifteen years. By May, I made a general confession, realizing what a Prodigal Daughter I was. God welcomed me back, and, well, ever since, God and I may have our struggles, but they are love struggles…and we make up pretty quickly.
Today’s Readings
Today’s readings remind me of that simple decision to return to regular, frequent confession:
From Sirach, we hear this wisdom:
To the penitent God provides a way back,
he encourages those who are losing hope
and has chosen for them the lot of truth.
Return to him and give up sin,
pray to the LORD and make your offenses few.
Turn again to the Most High and away from your sin,
hate intensely what he loathes,
and know the justice and judgments of God,
Stand firm in the way set before you,
in prayer to the Most High God.
I read Sirach now and get misty eyed as I remember how wonderfully “God provided a way back” for me. He encouraged me—at first through that Advent confession, then through the prompts of the habit of us Catholics to choose to do something for our relationship with God during Lent.
How much and well God chose for me “the lot of truth.” Father sent me to the catechism more than once during that time. He had me read specifics of what the church says in the catechism. By reading, I saw that some sins I thought were not-such-a-big-deal were mortal sins. I had confessed some of them before to other priests, and nobody labeled them as mortal sins. I was appalled, mortified, truly repentant. Some of those sins were not hard to give up; I just turned my focus. A couple of them were very hard to give up.
But, even in my tepidity, I did NOT want to break my relationship with God.
A Parish Effort?
This Lent our parish is studying Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire study of the Mass. It is WONDERFUL! I wondered Saturday night as some people signed up, others headed quickly to their cars, and more than a few walked across to the Parish Life Center to see the first video over a bowl of soup: Who will have an experience this Lent like I had in 2010? Who, come Easter, will say with joy what the Psalm says today:
Blessed is he whose fault is taken away,
whose sin is covered.
Blessed the man to whom the LORD imputes not guilt,
in whose spirit there is no guile.
Still, Just a Closer Walk with Thee
But it is not for me to rest on laurels. There is today’s Gospel. A man, who probably is of the same mind set that I am in these days, runs up to Jesus and says, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit Eternal Life?”
Maybe Jesus is turned off by the man’s focus on GETTING. Maybe he feels brown-nosed with the “Good Teacher.” He isn’t overly welcoming. No “ah, welcome, I’m glad you are interested in the Kingdom” comes out of Jesus’ mouth. Instead he seems curt. “Why do you call me good? No one is good except the Father.” Then Jesus rattles off the Commandments.
But the man says, “All those I have kept from my youth.”
THEN Scripture says,
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
My experience with the fire last fall, while releasing me from many things, still lets me know clearly that I still have plenty of attachments, bad habits, opinions, prejudices, greeds, desires, judgments, etc that represent I have not yet let go completely.
I follow Jesus, but carrying my baggage, my treasures.
What small decision will I make today that might be another open invitation to God to use this Lent to bring me closer to Himself? Jesus loves me. So he calls me more to Himself.
Jesus loves and calls you, too.
Prayer:
Lord, I give you full permission. Show me this Lent what I need to turn away from that I may turn more fully to you. Be in my mind. Be in my heart. Be in what happens in my life. Help me follow you. Call me loud. Call me clear.
Amen.
