Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent
Four years ago my sister became a fully consecrated Dominican sister, full habit and all. One of the most powerful parts of her final vow ceremony was when she and seven other women laid themselves prostrate on the altar. This act of total surrender sent a very clear message that these women had chosen to give all of themselves to the Lord. They were ready to be changed by the Lord and to live their lives for the Lord.
Similarly, it is when Abraham lays prostrate before the Lord that the Lord speaks his promises to him. The Lord promises him generations of descendants, land to call his own and a rich and prosperous future. Abraham needs only to do one thing – to keep the Lord’s covenant throughout the ages.
Yet this is a harder demand than we may think. To keep the Lord’s covenant means that Abraham’s life, and similarly our lives, must change. We must be willing to rethink the way we are living in order to follow the Lord. As part of my sister’s ceremony she officially received her new name, much in the same way that Abraham, after encountering the Lord, walks away with a new name. This is a very visible sign that meeting the Lord changes us so deeply that we are changed at the very core of our being. When we are willing to make these changes we can fully participate in God’s promises for us.
Often times the Lord’s promises are hard to comprehend and understand, just as the Jews in the Gospel simply could not believe what Jesus had to say about death. Any man who could promise that his followers would not see death surely must be crazy. I wonder if I would have reacted the same way had I been alive at that time. Jesus’s promise that “whoever keeps my word will never see death” sounds like an impossible promise to keep. I think I would have been baffled and unbelieving as well.
We need to ask ourselves: Which of the Lord’s promises do we react to in this way? When we hear of his mercy, forgiveness or love, do we balk and claim that it simply cannot be? Do we believe these promises are true for others but cannot apply to us? Or do we accept these promises, change our lives to follow Christ and lay ourselves prostrate at the foot of the cross?
As we near Palm Sunday and Holy week let us remember that the Lord promises goodness to us but that often to hear those promises we must be willing to surrender our lives to the Lord. To hear the Lord speak his promises we need to surrender fully, to lay ourselves prostrate at His feet. But when we rise again we must be willing to stand and live as a new and changed person, living for Christ.
- Amanda Grimm