The Driving Force Behind Lent
Shrovetide. On the first Sunday in Shrovetide, two weeks ago on Septuagesima Sunday, we heard about the labourers working in the field, with the clear message that it’s time for us to go work also, no matter how late it might be. Last week, Sexagesima, we looked at our reaction to Christ’s command to work in his vineyard. Did we obey his command, or did his word fall on deaf ears, did we fall into temptation, or were we distracted by the cares of the world? Today is Quinquagesima Sunday, only a couple more days left before Lent begins. The Church pulls out all the stops on this last Sunday before Lent to incite us to begin the work necessary for our salvation.
What is this great incentive that should drive us to give up our own will for the sake of God? It is the virtue of Charity. Charity, or Love. Greater than our faith, true and authentic though that faith may be, greater than our hope and trust in God, greater than any of the virtues, Charity is by far the most important, the most essential even. Charity is another name for love, the real love that is based on sacrificing our own will for the person we love. St. Paul’s Epistle today is the greatest description of Charity ever revealed by God, and we would do well to read it carefully every day, not just this one day of Quinquagesima. It provides in great detail the essence of what Charity is and how we should practice it.
Today’s Gospel reinforces St. Paul’s description with the prophecy of our Lord, that he would be delivered to the Romans, suffer mockery and ill-treatment, that he would be scourged and put to death. Never was there a display of higher charity than this, our Lord Jesus Christ suffering his Passion and Death for the love of his Father in heaven. “Not my will, but thine be done,” he exclaims in Gethsemane. And why did God will that his only-begotten Son should be so vilely treated? Because God loves us. This is the underlying and most astonishing fact behind the seasons of Lent and Passiontide. We’re not surprised that Christ loved his Father. What we should find truly amazing is when we consider that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Why did God have mercy on his people? Because he loves us. We don’t deserve it, but we are his children and he loves us. This simple but astounding fact should never grow cold in our mind. Doing penance during Lent is our annual response to this humbling recognition of God’s love.
It’s a simple enough proposition. If God loves us, we owe him our love in return. We owe it. It is our duty to love God. But if we truly love God, that duty will be very easy for us to accomplish. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light,” says our Lord. In the Aramaic, it actually reads “My yoke is pleasant.” Yes, pleasant. We should take pleasure in carrying out our yearly penances during Lent. We just celebrated the feast of St. Valentine. Presumably on that day, we took pleasure in doing something nice for the ones we love. Lent is our forty-day Valentine’s Day for God. We find pleasure in giving up things for God, and in the thought that these little things we give up are beautiful in his sight.
So let’s complete our preparation for Lent today by instilling in ourselves the idea of how pleased we should be in pleasing God by our actions during Lent. Feeble and inadequate they may be, but God is not looking for total satisfaction from our gifts. Only the offering of his Son on the Cross was sufficient, truly satisfactory, for that. But it is neverthless pleasing to him when he sees his children doing their best to love him in return for what he has done for us.
Our penances are gifts to God, gifts freely given without the thought of getting any reward for them. But if we do seek anything in return, if we do want to ask God for one single thing, it should be in the simple words of the blind man in today’s Gospel… “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” Loving God doesn’t entitle us to anything, but if we maintain our faith and continue to hope in his mercy, the crowning factor of this love, our charity, will surely help our cause when the day of judgment comes. Let this not be the selfish cause of our penance, however, but rather a secondary consequence of the real reason. Let everything we do be primarily for the greater glory of God. “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name be the glory!”