The Litter of Lent

Crushed cigarettes
Crumpled candy wrappers
Empty beer bottles
Idle talk hanging like a polluted fog in the air

This is the litter of a lost Lent
The debris of sotereological debilitation

How is Lent going for you?
A triumph?
A tragedy?
A cocktail concocted in the shaker of success and failure?

What does it mean to stand in the middle of a middling Lent?

Long lines at the reconciliation room?
Fanatical attempts to reshape the debris into something meaningful at last?
Guilt for a lack of willpower?

If this crossroads of the season of Lent invites us to anything, it invites us to a bit of self-examination. How are we doing? Not only in Lent but in general.

Unfortunately, in our context, this self examination can sometimes be grueling, not from the standpoint external judgment (after all the judges can, in fact, sometimes be quite lenient, even in evaluations) but rather from internal accusation.

And to all such, Jesus has some good advice, a command even, drawn like fresh bread from the oven of today’s Gospel

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you feeling a bit let down by Lent, crippled by the reality that your ideals and your will cannot find a proper point of intersection?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you prone in your life of strict self-examination to wallowing in the waters of a beleaguered Bethesda?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you feeling a little crippled by the seminary, by its unreasonable demands on such an unworthy, unfit, unstable person as yourself?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you still weighed down by your obsessions, your addictions, and the absolute lack of cooperation in your body to participate in the work of salvation?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you tired, unpopular, do you poop out at full, conscious, active participation in the liturgy of the life of discipleship?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you not yet free of the plaque of your last confession, your last reconciliation, your last contrition?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Are you all too prone to worry, to self doubt, to your lack of ability to stand on the two legs of courage and fortitude?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Do those around you see you as a special case, a poor thing, a babe in arms and are you all too willing to clothe yourself with the rags of self-pity and weakness?

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

Take up your mat and walk because Lent is not a time for feeding our insecurities but rather for fasting from whining and excuses

Lent is not a time for anchoring our prayer on what is not there, but a time for fixing our eyes firmly on the object of prayer, our unity with a God who heals, who forgives, who loves us in spite of our debritorious nature

Lent is not a time for spiritual self immolation, but a time to offer the pure alms of a broken and sometimes ill-conceived life in anticipation of fusing our weak frames, our tired minds, our sodden spirits to the great sacrifice of Christ, the sacrifice he did not fear to make, he did not hesitate to make, but rather taking up the mat of the cross he walked, stumbled, fell, was helped, suffered and died and rose from the dead, leaving all the spiritual debilitated an example in his person of what it means to be truly free.

Brothers and sisters, today let us leave behind our gathering places of regret and doubt, our sheep gates of worthlessness and self-pity a Lenten landscape strewn with

Crushed cigarettes
Crumpled candy wrappers
Empty beer bottles
Idle talk hanging like a populated fog in the air

And in light of our invitation here, let us resolve to enter upright into the city of God, and perhaps we will meet Jesus there, on his way out.

Do you want to be healed?

“Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”