+- Luckymodena (http://lucky.myftp.org:8181/forum)
+-- Forum: Life Voyage : Life, experience and sharing (/forumdisplay.php?fid=10)
+--- Forum: Scripture readings (/forumdisplay.php?fid=12)
+--- Thread: LIFE AS THE GOAL OF THE LENTEN SEASON (/showthread.php?tid=1629)
LIFE AS THE GOAL OF THE LENTEN SEASON - stephenkhoo - 02-23-2012 10:18 AM
23 February, 2012, Thursday After Ash Wednesday
LIFE AS THE GOAL OF THE LENTEN SEASON
SCRIPTURE READINGS: DT 30:15-20; LK 9:22-25
Yesterday we began the season of Lent with Ash Wednesday. The theme of yesterday’s mass was on repentance and conversion. To assist us in this process of conversion, the gospel of yesterday mapped out for us the Lenten program, which consists of almsgiving, fasting and prayer. However, if we were to carry out this Lenten program blindly without understanding the goal of such Lenten exercises, then Lent would become burdensome, making life rather drab and colourless. No wonder, many people have a negative attitude towards Lent because it seems that Lent makes life miserable for us and takes the joy out of living.
However such an attitude is totally against the Spirit of Lent. Lent, as we know, is a spring festival. Lent is the beginning of new life. The whole focus of Lent is that we start by finding life, and we hope that at the end of the season we would find the fullness of life. Life, then, is the real focus of Lent. This was what Moses offered to the people, “See, today I set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster.” This is the ultimate reason for the celebration of this season. As such, the scripture readings of today speak about life. This season is thus an invitation for us to choose life, not death. If this season does not make us more alive, then we have misconstrued the purpose of this whole celebration.
What kind of life are we then called to have? Firstly, we are offered a fullly human life. This is what Jesus meant when He said, “For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it.” Of course, He was not referring so much to our physical life, but our existential and personal life. In the first reading, Moses assured his people that they would find life because God would bless them in the land they were entering. To have a full human life is the first aspect of life that is offered to us at Lent. It was presumed that to choose life includes all the blessings of God.
Of course, the life that is offered at Lent is not simply a physical life. More than that, we are concerned about having the fullness of life, which is a life of the Spirit, or what we call, a spiritual life. Physical life alone will not give us real life. As Jesus warns us in the gospel, a man may gain the whole world, but lose his very being, his very self. Clearly therefore, it is essential that a man lives more than on the superficial level. He is called to live deeply as well. Otherwise, he is reduced to an animal. But he is not, because man has a soul. He needs physical comfort, food, but he also needs love and freedom and meaning. It is meaning that gives purpose to a man’s life.
How, then, do we reconcile this apparent opposition between physical and spiritual life? The paradox of life is that by dying to ourselves, as Jesus taught in the gospel, we find life. Jesus warned us, “What gain, then, is it for a man to have the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?” For this reason, Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.” By renouncing ourselves, we actually live a fuller and healthier life, both physically and spiritually. In truth, human life and spiritual life are not opposed. The Lenten works of fasting and almsgiving precisely attend to this dimension of life. Fasting, when seen on the purely biological level, has been shown to be good for physical health. Today, many alternative medicines are promoting regular fasting to remove toxic from our bodies. Dieticians tell us the necessity to go on diet and not to overeat. We know the importance of keeping a healthy and balanced diet, avoiding unhealthy food. This requires discipline and self denial.
But this is the not the goal of fasting. It is meant to lead to identification with those who are hungry and starving. The fruit of fasting is compassion and almsgiving. The purpose of fasting is to motivate us to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, the starving and the hungry. It is not just to make ourselves slim or save money but to identify with the poor through fasting so that we can render assistance to them. Without feeling with the poor, we cannot truly understand their pain and suffering. So true fasting leads to almsgiving, otherwise, the fasting would have been done in vain, since it does not release a person from his self-centeredness.
When we begin to share with the poor and the marginalized, we come to appreciate life and what we already have, instead of complaining about what we have not. Quite often, many of us are demanding because we have taken for granted the blessings we already have. This explains why those who have gone on mercy or mission trips to the poorer countries find great joy and meaning in the trips, partly because they experienced the joy of helping the underprivileged and also learnt to appreciate life much better. That is why sending money to poor countries and aids to the starving and the deprived are incomparable to being there to assist them. The truth of life is that we are not moved by what we do not see and experience directly. It is a praiseworthy act to give money to the poor, but greater still is when we use our hands to help them personally because they will then receive not just things from us but our personal love. We in turn experience God’s love from them when we see the joy and smiles on their faces. Through giving, we receive the joy of love and gratitude. This gives us the foretaste of sharing in the joys of Christ emptying Himself for others. Then we can understand the paradox of losing life to find life. The joy of making a difference in the life of others is indescribable. It is a real experience of the paradox of Jesus, that to live is to die. This paradox cannot be explained but can only be lived and experienced.
To live life, both on the physical and spiritual levels, is to have a foretaste of the resurrected life. This is the ultimate goal of Lent – that the life we live is nothing less than the life that Jesus lived, which is the resurrected life. It is our conviction and our faith that just as Jesus was raised to life, we too can share in that resurrected life as well. The resurrected life is the only kind of life that is worth living.
How then can such a life be offered to us? This resurrected life is given to all who immerse themselves in the life of Christ. It presupposes dying to self, as Jesus tells us in the gospel. Concretely, it means loving God and our fellow human beings; walking in the path of God, which is the path of love and self-emptying. In the process of loving and serving, we find life now and hereafter. Conversely, it means turning away from worshipping false gods; that is those things that do not really give us life but bring us enslavement. This will certainly bring about our disaster and consequently, physical and spiritual death. This is what Moses warned his people. He said, “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin on you today, if you love the Lord your God and follow his ways, if you keep his commandments, his laws, his customs, you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to make your own. But if your heart strays, if you refuse to listen, if you let yourself be drawn into worshipping other gods and serving them, I tell you today, you will most certainly perish; you will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.”
If we want to live, we must cling on to God who alone can give us fulfillment and completeness. No one and nothing on this earth can satisfy us fully. To think that our loved ones, especially our spouses, can complete us totally is a delusion because the love of human beings is limited. Only God can satisfy the abyss of our heart that desires to be loved more and more. This is expressed aptly by Moses when he said, “you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God, obeying his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists.” Only by abiding in His love through obedience to His commandments, can we be fruitful in what we do. The psalmist says that he who “delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night … is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. Whatever he does, prospers.” Keeping close to God ultimately entails a life of prayer, since the fruit of prayer is faith; and the fruit of faith is love and compassion.
So as we begin this season of Lent, an understanding of the end is important. Without a clear understanding of the goal of Lent, we might end up finding the trees but not the forest; that is, we will be doing whatever the Lenten program tells us, but we will not find life. Let us ensure that whatever we do during this Lenten season, be it fasting, praying or almsgiving, truly liberate us from our ego, attachments and heartlessness, so that renouncing ourselves, we are truly liberated for love, selfless service in humility and freedom.