Wednesday of the First Week in Lent
During Lent, the Church invites us to focus on repentance. We pray, fast, give alms, and practice other penitential disciplines as a means of humbling ourselves before God. We repent of our sins, turn towards God, and seek God’s mercy. I’m pondering today what motivates us to repent. What leads us to true contrition for our sins? The psalmist sings, “A heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.” What motivates us, what leads us to that state of heart?
Jonah had barely begun to preach a call to repentance throughout the city of Nineveh when the people were moved to fasting and repentance. They were cut to the quick by God’s warning of impending destruction. I can assume it was fear that motivated them – fear of God’s wrath coming upon them, fear of death. When the king of Nineveh heard the news, he also was cut to the quick and immediately decreed that all people and animals would fast and that all the people would repent and pray, seeking God’s favor and forgiveness. I can assume that all the people responded to the king’s edict out of obedience to the king’s authority.
What motivates you to fast and pray during Lent? Is it fear of God? I know for some people this can be true. Perhaps, like the Ninevites, you’re afraid that God might punish you, afraid of incurring God’s disfavor, afraid of God’s anger? Others among us may fast and pray during Lent because the Church has prescribed these practices for us. We participate in Lenten observances out of obligation to Church teaching and Church authority, not unlike the people of Nineveh humbling themselves under the king’s authority.
Jesus leads us to enter into these spiritual disciplines as an expression of our relationship with him. Jesus tells us that Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites. What kind of sign? A sign, a symbol of repentance, that pointed to Christ himself. Jesus said to the people of his time, “there is something greater than Jonah here.” That greater something is the one and only means for our repentance, the way of salvation and forgiveness. We can only truly repent as a response to the love of God revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery. Jesus’ death on the Cross, his Resurrection, and Ascension make it possible for us to enter into relationship with him. Repentance becomes possible within relationship. The love of God reaches out to us from the Cross and beckons us into an intimate love relationship with the Divine. We become moved to repentance when we awaken to the scandalous, infinite love of God, receive it as a free gift, and fall to our faces at the foot of the Cross. Love motivates us to repent. Gratitude motivates us to repent. Beholding Christ on the Cross motivates us to repent.
Our psalmist prays, “Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.” God comes to us in love, mercy, goodness, and compassion, not in wrath. Standing in the light of God’s love, we are not afraid. Today, let us fast, let us pray, let us repent, out of hearts responding to the goodness of God. Today, let us fast, let us pray, let us repent, out of obedience to Church teaching, but let’s not stop there. Let’s allow God’s mercy and compassion to touch our hearts so deeply that we cannot help but respond immediately with a true contrition that leads to repentance. Sirach 2:18 says, “equal to [God’s] majesty is [God’s] mercy.” Let us trust in God’s infinite mercy toward each one of us as we allow our hearts to be motivated anew by God’s unfailing love and by gratitude for Christ’s Paschal Mystery. Amen!
Elizabeth Wells