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Lent
is meant to expose the dry bones within
PRAISED BE JESUS
CHRIST!
(Now and Forever)
The Lenten season continues to call us to prayer, fasting and
almsgiving. On a deeper level it challenges us to face the reality of
sin and forgiveness. The basic task is to examine where sin has become a
reality in our lives, to uncover what is dry, dark and dead in us that
needs to be refreshed, enlightened and brought back to life.
The sin that you and I are called to examine during Lent is not the
“laundry list” stuff that is routinely prepared prior to stepping into a
confessional: the nasty words, the fights with spouse/children/parents,
failure to pray, eating or drinking too much, impure thoughts, etc.,
etc. Those things and others far more serious may need attention, but
individual acts that are sinful are rooted deeply in the immeasurable
reality of sin and it is that reality that needs to be the focus of our
Lenten prayer and fasting.
The depth of that sin is revealed to us, in part, by the fact that God
sent Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, to take it on. The
sin that Jesus came into the world to rescue us from is a pervasive
environment, an atmosphere of death and destruction that seeks to
pervert the world that God made good. In Catholic doctrine it’s called
original sin. It is a sin rooted in the original separation of human
beings from the way God created us: good, holy, in God’s image, at peace
with God and with creation. Once human beings decided to try it another
way, that original act of disobedience compounded through the centuries.
In-stead of harmony, there was strife; instead of unity, there was war.
When people looked at each other, they saw not brothers and sisters, but
competitors and enemies. When they looked at the earth, they did not see
God’s free gifts, but territory to conquer and power to accrue.
Each generation became more ensnared in the way the world developed.
Rulers sent their people to fight and die against other rulers in order
to increase their wealth and prestige. Winners in war enslaved the
losers, taking away their land, their possessions, their way of life,
their language, and even their way of worshipping God.
Among the readings for the fifth Sunday of Lent (Cycle A) is the story
of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel and the dry bones. God gives
Ezekiel a vision of what sin has done to Israel. He was shown a vast
plain that is scattered with bones — not dead bodies, or even skeletons,
but the bones of those dead so long that they have been scattered by
animals and wind and have become dry and brittle. This was the Israel of
Ezekiel’s day. People had strayed from God’s ways and played the game of
power and prestige. They had lost. They were exiled, captives in a
foreign land. Like the bones on the desert floor, they had no life, no
spirit.
As a sidebar, there were three deportations of Jews to Babylonia: 598
B.C.; 586 B.C.; and 582 B.C. The inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem were
forced to leave their native place for enforced residence in Babylon
(modern Iraq). The inhabitants of the northern kingdom were deported to
Assyria (northern Iraq). Each deportation was a national disaster.
In his vision, Ezekiel is instructed to preach God’s word to the bones,
and as he does, the bones come back together and take on muscle and
skin. Ezekiel is then instructed to preach God’s word to the wind, and
as he does so the bodies fill with breath and come to life. Just as it
came to pass in your vision, God says to Ezekiel, so I will make it
happen. I will put life back in the poor, defeated people. I will give
them my breath, my spirit, so that they will know who I am and live on
the land I have given them in the way that I show them.
God’s message to the prophet Ezekiel is his Lenten message to us. Jesus
Christ lived and died to rescue us from the ways of sin. With Jesus, in
baptism, we were brought out of death. In Jesus, the powers of sin and
death were taken on and Jesus won. That wasn’t obvious at first. The
imperial and religious powers that conspired to put an end to Jesus had
every reason to think that they had succeeded. They humiliated him,
publicly executed him, and put a guard in front of his tomb.
But, Jesus had already won. He had not altered his allegiance, his
faithfulness to God. In God’s name he defied the powers that divided
people into rich and poor, holy and unholy, conquerors and conquered,
insiders and outsiders. Because he was faithful to his vocation, God
raised him up.
In baptism, each one of us is “called forth from sin.” We are freed to
give our allegiance to God. We want to do precisely that, but it isn’t
easy. We are so used to the ways of the culture of death that it slips
into our lives.
As the catechumens prepare to enter the waters of baptism, to die to the
ways of sin and live in Christ Jesus by scrutinizing themselves in the
light of the Gospel, the rest of us are challenged to stand with them
and to call to mind the ways that we have chosen death rather than life.
For those who have not yet been baptized, we pray that they will be
freed from the “grasp of death” and delivered “from the spirit of
corruption” and we join together in silent prayer as hands are laid on
their heads. Through that ancient gesture of the scrutinies we ask the
Holy Spirit to strengthen them and to remove what is sinful.
Those of us who have been baptized also have an ancient way of praying
for strength and for the removal of what is sinful. It is called the
sacrament of penance. Through that sacrament Christ continually
offers the forgiveness that we need to turn dry bones into the life he
has called us to live through baptism. For those who have looked within
themselves and who see what Ezekiel saw (dry bones), the sacrament of
reconciliation (confession) is the way God says “I will put my spirit in
you that you may have life.”
We need Easter because Easter and preparing for it urges us to stare
death in the face and come to realize that if we really believe that
Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we will never be content being
dry bones. Rather, we will look for the ways in which sin slips into our
lives and we will listen as Jesus says to us: “Do you really believe
in me?” When those words are addressed to us, it is not pious talk.
Rather, it’s challenging us to life-changing, tomb-opening faith. Do
you really believe that I have called you to be holy? Do you really
believe that I am the resurrection and the life?
If the answer is yes, we have some work to do. Hopefully, we will emerge
from Lent with determination to do it remembering that with God all
things are possible. |
