How is our Lent going? We have just celebrated Laudate Sunday and we are half way to Easter. This can be the very time when our prayer, fasting and almsgiving can start to feel burdensome. We wonder whether it is doing us any good and whether we are coming closer to Christ in the midst of what seems to be a relentless toil. We wonder whether what we have been doing makes a difference to us or to anybody else. Yet the important message is don't give up. Sometimes when we are tired we start to focus more on what we are doing rather than who we are doing it with. This movement into a deeper relationship with Christ is at the heart of all our Lenten discipline. It may be time to have a little Examin of who is at the heart of it all.
Our prayer seeks to be an encounter with God in which we raise two questions: who am I and whose am I? These two questions are not just onesided or ones which demand a simple response. In essence, we are called to encounter God as ourselves, not as someone else. While many spiritual guides can help us to go deeper into this relationship they cannot do it for us. They can accompany to tell us what they encountered so that we can have reference points for our own journey. It is only by encountering Jesus as we are that we can discover Jesus as he is.
Our fasting emerges out of this relationship. There are times wherein meeting God we can discover a deep emptiness that needs to be filled. There can be a temptation here to fill that emptiness by our own efforts and to meet our own appetites for wholeness. We can become afraid of that place where we disappear into an empty cave which seems to resound with our own voice. We can start to feel deeply fearful in this place and long to escape from this radical encounter. So because we fear to be in that place we fill it with noise, activity or stuff. As long as we do not have to experience this emptiness we can point to what we are doing, what we are in control of and things we own to show that my life has substance and meaning. Yet what we discover, is that these lessen our ability to hear the voice of God. In fact, when you look at many of the saints they would visit the cave so that they could hear God more clearly and discover what it was to be themselves. When we fast we discover a deeper meaning to be who are called to be.
It is from this place that we give our lives to others through Almsgiving. This is not just giving what is left over but rather a discovery that what I have is valuable to others. My life is not just my own. I have been gifted to bring life to others. This emerges not just as something I give away but rather a surrender to who I am called to be. By a surrender of my life to God, we discover that our lives are called to a deeper communion which is not just based on my effort but on God's grace which enables me to accomplish more than I can imagine.
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