Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
As I celebrate Mardi Gras today with my family and I look ahead to the beginning of Lent tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, I find myself considering and reflecting on the purpose of Lenten practices in drawing Christians closer to God and making us more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. I find myself wondering how I can allow the experience of Lent this year to make a positive difference in my life and the lives of those around me.
In the gospel reading for today Jesus finds himself tested by the Pharisees and some followers of Herod. They are trying to trap him, so they ask him whether to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus does not accept the premise of their question. In fact, he turns the question back on them, asking them whose image appears on the coin. It is of course Caesar’s image; therefore, we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Implicit in Jesus’ response to the Pharisees’ question is another question: To whom do we belong? To whom are we supposed to render service? And the implicit answer to this question is that we are God’s creatures. Being creatures of God has the implication that we should live in the awareness that this is the case. We are called not just to do the right thing, but also to love as God loves.
During the season of Lent the Church encourages Christians to make sacrifices in the areas of fasting and almsgiving. This is not just ancient Christian practice; it was a key part of Jewish tradition before Christianity, as the example of Tobit (the first reading today and yesterday) illustrates. Over the years, many people have misunderstood why Christians may be called to engage in these ascetic practices. They have also wondered at why Christians sometimes feel called to become celibate religious or even why Christians willingly take on the vocation of marriage. But such perplexity results from a lack of understanding of the goals or purposes of asceticism. Its final, intended result is not mortification, nor is it hatred of the created world. Rather it is love that motivates Christians to do these things. Christians believe that through these practices they are doing God’s will and through them we can be drawn closer to God.
I have a tendency to forget that God created everything good and it is only through the misuse of God’s good creation that evil has entered the world. If this is true for creation as a whole, it is also true of me as an individual human being. As I consider how to begin my Lenten journey this year I have found it helpful to consider the positive goals of Lenten practice–their capacity to reorient me towards a right relationship with God. Christians are drawn to fasting and almsgiving by love of God and neighbor. There is the promise and hope that through them my love for God and others will increase. Yet love also involves sacrifice. What more powerful reminder do we have of this than Jesus’ passion and death? As followers of Jesus, our Lenten practices should be life-affirming rather than life-denying. Yet even as we look toward the reality of the resurrection of Jesus at Easter, this must be done without denying the hardship of Lent and the real need to come to terms with our own failings.
-Joel Schickel