-- A
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Lent: Going Back to Basics
Lent is a time when many of us put on our heroic halos and attempt that act of mortification we meant to do last year. Making sacrifices during Lent is a powerful means of bringing our self-love to death, and creating the space for real Love to enter. But Lent should also be a time of making sure
we're even doing the basics.Think of your spiritual journey as a mountain you must climb. The Mountain is life in God. The Summit is perfect union with God.
Think of yourself as a car. It is impossible for a car to drive up the raw side of a mountain - rock, trees and such in the way. Well, in the time between Adam and Jesus, no one could drive up the Mountain of Life either--pride, sin and such in the way. We were separated from our God. There wasn't yet a way back to him.
Then, in three words upon a cross, Jesus, the Master Road Builder, declared a new path up the Mountain: "It is finished," he said.
But first, we must all enter a gate to get onto this new Way. The gate is Baptism (toll free!). Most of us have already passed through and are on our way.
Jesus is the Way we follow up the Mountain of Life. It is a narrow path mind you, bumpy and full of hairpins. Nonetheless, it is clear. It winds around and around, always ascending toward the Summit.
So none of us would get lost, Jesus built the Way with a guardrail. He even painted yellow lines. These are his commandments, his will. We follow the Way by following the guardrails (commandments) and yellow lines (conscience).
Think of the steering wheel as your will. You can choose where to point your car. Amazingly, you can steer it right off the mountain if you like! The Way to proceed up the Mountain then becomes very clear - steer your will exactly within the bounds of God's will and all will be fine.
Now, some people have a hard time with this, because God's will for us is often just doing the dishes, finishing our homework, shoveling the walk, going to work, going to bed on time...the duty of the moment. Seems mundane, but this is deceiving. As difficult and boring as it is to be consistently doing the little things, this is when the road is steepest and therefore most progress can be made.
This progress is speediest when it's done with love. But, without love, it is like leaving your foot on the brakes... or dragging a trailer without wheels behind you (which is self-love).
Now, you're free to do anything you want on this mountain, including putting on the brakes. (There is no gas pedal, by the way. Car runs only on faith.) You can stop if you like, that is, be a Christian in name only. But you'll only start to roll down the hill, and eventually off it. Jesus called these drivers "lukewarm".
Venial sin is when we put ourselves before God's will. It's like hitting the guardrails. We still want to go up the mountain, but our way. We do a little damage to our cars--enough to impede our progress, but not stop it. Mortal sin is when we reject God and his will altogether. We plow our car through the guardrail, and for an instant feel free...as the gravity of sin pulls us down toward the Valley of Pleasures. While momentarily pleasurable, we now find ourselves sitting in a tangled heap in the dark and damp Forest of Bondage (it just looked like "Pleasure" from above). Worse, we are off the Mountain of Life...until we hear the whisper of God's love and mercy: "Come back to me."
His Spirit enters the darkness and shows us the way: Confession. God purifies our hearts and sets us back on his Mountain, sometimes even higher than before. For the purer our hearts, the higher up the Mountain we will be. And the higher we are, the more we begin to see reality.
The heights we notice as we peer out our car window are akin to knowing deeper our sinfulness and need of God (represented by the frightening heights we are at: we can see where we've come from). The expanding horizon beyond is our growing realization of how far and wide and limitless God's love is for us. The two combined form true knowledge and the ingredients of true freedom.
The comforting part of the journey is knowing even though we haven't reached the Summit, we are still on God's Mountain of Life. Still saved. Still his beloved sons and daughters despite our imperfection.
This Lent and always, we are loved, no matter where we are at--on the Mountain and even in the Valley.
But let's climb higher. The view is incredible!
--Mark Mallett
Copyright 2002
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