I Think the Whole Country Could Use a Good Dose of a Holy Lent
In seven days, we Christians, no matter our denomination or tradition - except for Eastern Rite Christians who are a week behind us, liturgically speaking but that’s another story – will enter into the more somber and solemn season of Lent. During this forty day (more or less) period, we are all going to have the opportunity to take a “time out” and reflect (like Christians of a long forgotten era who had been undergoing periods of public penance) on how we having been living up to and in to our Baptism covenant. Are we thinking, feeling and acting as disciples of the Risen One who has called us into His life? Are we taking our own mortality and finiteness seriously as we take time out and listen to a call to once again “repent and believe in the Good News” of our redemption in Christ.
So far, this sounds like an Ash Wednesday sermon, doesn’t it? But I’d like to make this more graphic. Last Sunday, there is this wonderfully terse statement from Jesus about the meaning of YOUR words. “Say “yes’ when you mean ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when you mean ‘no’. Everything else comes from the Evil One.”
Haven’t we all just had enough of all the language fudging? Using sports as a microcosm for general culture, haven’t we heard enough about players who cheat, get caught and then demand that we look the other way. No one cheats: they are “getting an edge”. No one must be held accountable: they are too important a product making money for the owners and therefore must be protected from their responsibility. (Do any of you remember: “too big to fail” as a reason why banks had to be protected from their outrageous practices that brought the housing market down over a decade ago?)
No one lies: they “misspeak” or “misremember” or “speak prematurely or have their spokesperson pump out explanations as to why you are at fault for challenging their (mis)statements. We now have “alternate truths,” “Spinning” used to be a child’s game or the frightful result of a car on ice. Now it is a way to manufacture “your narrative” as opposed to objective truth – which doesn’t exist anyway as we are told.
And the guardians of truth are hardly better. It seems that it is far more important to get the story “first” rather than get it ‘right”. A false account can get large type on page 1. A retraction and admission of inaccuracy will be buried on the lower left corner on p. 47 of section c-67.
Jesus taught that saying anything simply beyond the simple truths of “yes” and “no” is a product of the Evil One. Seems like a lot of Evil One stuff is going on. Seems to me like we as a nation really need to do some “repenting and believing” this Lent.
-- Fr. Joe