Check out details on the Season of Lent
We get offended, put off
and angry by so many things - traffic, being late, relationships, not meeting
our goals. So often its over little things and sometimes over everything! Of
course this slows us down and wears us out. Often all we need to do is
"get over it", but the how can be a stumbling block. In our newseries for the season of Lent we will ask ourselves what are the stumbling
blocks to getting over stuff.
Each of us in
our life gets offended or upset. It may come from something that breaks a law
or rule or something we simply see as distasteful or unpleasant. Being offended
in life is inevitable. You can’t get through a year, a month, a week, or even a
day without being offended in some way. Some offences that we experience are
simply perceived. We feel offended or hurt even though no real harm or
injustice has been done to us. It is just our wounded pride or bruised ego. Then,
there are real offences. We live in a sin-stained world and people will lie to
us or cheat us or steal from us or harm us in some other way. Sometimes
these lead to anger, and sometimes that anger can be lingering and it can slow
us down or impact our own success. Offences are a trap, they are a temptation.
As we begin
Lent we are painted with a picture in our Gospel of Jesus in the desert faced
with temptation. In this encounter in the desert Jesus comes to portrays for us
who He is and what He is about. Now Mark the Gospel writer does not go into the
same detail of this happening as Matthew or Luke - we are not listed the
temptations that Jesus faced - just that He was. So what is Temptation? Well
for our series we will go with the working definition that it is “an invitation
to embrace self-interest”
If we are not
careful, we will take offenses into our heart and harbor them there. When we
hold on to an offense, we become angry and entitled and self-centered. If this
grows roots within us, then it is the invitation to look so much at what I
want or need that the other becomes unimportant to our life. Yet what we must
remember is that when your life is all about you, you don’t just hurt yourself,
you lose yourself... we begin to live life in the desert.
The desert has always been a place of mystery and fascination. The African Sahara appears to be an infinitely desolate, isolated “ocean” of deprivation; a place of DEATH! Yet, amazingly, some species have been able to not only adapt to such a harsh and primitive environment, but THRIVE in the desert. Once they have become so accustomed to so little, too much water or nourishment are destructive to them. Such an example is the American desert rose, which blooms only when deprived of all but the slightest amount of water and soil nutrient.
Ironically, the desert is always the place God sends his faithful to find LIFE! Moses spent 40 days fasting and repenting for the sin of Israel in the desert. The Israelites journeyed 40 years through the desert to reach a land “flowing with milk and honey.” The great monastic fathers of the Church sought refuge from destructive elements of LIFE, in the place of “death”: the desert. And therein lies the answer. The desert is the place to escape LIFE’s worldly abundance, which often leads to spiritual death. Only when one puts to death their destructively obsessive, self-indulgent nature, can the source of everlasting LIFE be discovered. In the spiritual life, LESS TRULY IS MORE!
And with that, St. Mark tells us, the Holy Spirit compelled (“drove”) Jesus to go to the desert where He struggled, as do we every day, with what it means to be human. Mark does not go into the details of the other Gospels as to what these struggles were, only that Jesus found himself between the Spirit and Satan, between the wild beasts and the angels sent by God and ministered to him. Jesus emerged from the desert with his own answer to human life. He called it the Gospel, the good news of God, robust with infinite mercy, love and LIFE! Jesus emerged aware that the reign of God was at hand precisely because God was at hand with Jesus throughout his temptations.
This week begins our 40 day journey we call “Lent,” a time to allow The Spirit to “drive us” into “the desert” endeavoring to get away from the materialism and self-indulgent life style that we have become addicted to, but what many have discovered only drags us down and drives us away from God. We are called to accept the LIFE changing offer Jesus made: “Repent and believe.” Repent (in Greek: metanoia) which doesn’t mean to be sorry, but to literally turn one’s life around and go in the opposite direction. Believe in the Gospel: we can change direction, but not walk in the direction of the Lord. Jesus is calling us to do both. “Take on a new perspective! Believe what I am saying about God and about true LIFE and happiness!” If we allow the Spirit to “drive us” to “die in the desert,” we can discover TRUE LIFE. Once we strip away all that we believe has value and we think can sustain us, and wrestle with the “wild beasts” of fasting, almsgiving, penance and prayer, we will uncover in this place of isolation, desolation and deprivation what Jesus and our spiritual fore-fathers discovered: “Springs of Living Water”: a God who will eternally sustain us with joy and fulfillment. Like the desert rose, we can learn to not only adapt to a world of less, but that we can physically and spiritual thrive from a life of less.
You see the more we just look at ourselves, or remain locked in the mud of our own existence, the more we miss the opportunities that God gives us to discover who we are by interacting with others and learning through such. We have a choice about how to handle offences. Rather than falling into a trap, we can choose to deal with temptation (“an invitation to embrace self-interest”) in a healthy manner.
Ironically, the desert is always the place God sends his faithful to find LIFE! Moses spent 40 days fasting and repenting for the sin of Israel in the desert. The Israelites journeyed 40 years through the desert to reach a land “flowing with milk and honey.” The great monastic fathers of the Church sought refuge from destructive elements of LIFE, in the place of “death”: the desert. And therein lies the answer. The desert is the place to escape LIFE’s worldly abundance, which often leads to spiritual death. Only when one puts to death their destructively obsessive, self-indulgent nature, can the source of everlasting LIFE be discovered. In the spiritual life, LESS TRULY IS MORE!
And with that, St. Mark tells us, the Holy Spirit compelled (“drove”) Jesus to go to the desert where He struggled, as do we every day, with what it means to be human. Mark does not go into the details of the other Gospels as to what these struggles were, only that Jesus found himself between the Spirit and Satan, between the wild beasts and the angels sent by God and ministered to him. Jesus emerged from the desert with his own answer to human life. He called it the Gospel, the good news of God, robust with infinite mercy, love and LIFE! Jesus emerged aware that the reign of God was at hand precisely because God was at hand with Jesus throughout his temptations.
This week begins our 40 day journey we call “Lent,” a time to allow The Spirit to “drive us” into “the desert” endeavoring to get away from the materialism and self-indulgent life style that we have become addicted to, but what many have discovered only drags us down and drives us away from God. We are called to accept the LIFE changing offer Jesus made: “Repent and believe.” Repent (in Greek: metanoia) which doesn’t mean to be sorry, but to literally turn one’s life around and go in the opposite direction. Believe in the Gospel: we can change direction, but not walk in the direction of the Lord. Jesus is calling us to do both. “Take on a new perspective! Believe what I am saying about God and about true LIFE and happiness!” If we allow the Spirit to “drive us” to “die in the desert,” we can discover TRUE LIFE. Once we strip away all that we believe has value and we think can sustain us, and wrestle with the “wild beasts” of fasting, almsgiving, penance and prayer, we will uncover in this place of isolation, desolation and deprivation what Jesus and our spiritual fore-fathers discovered: “Springs of Living Water”: a God who will eternally sustain us with joy and fulfillment. Like the desert rose, we can learn to not only adapt to a world of less, but that we can physically and spiritual thrive from a life of less.
You see the more we just look at ourselves, or remain locked in the mud of our own existence, the more we miss the opportunities that God gives us to discover who we are by interacting with others and learning through such. We have a choice about how to handle offences. Rather than falling into a trap, we can choose to deal with temptation (“an invitation to embrace self-interest”) in a healthy manner.