Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18
Matthew 25:31-46
Mark Searle has written,
“...it...comes as something of a shock to hear Lent described...as 'this joyful season.' “For those of us conditioned to imagine Lent as a grim, unpleasant time, the temptation will be either to shrug it off as poetic license or to associate it with a mother's attempt to persuade a child to take its medicine.
“But there is always C. S. Lewis. In his account of his youth and its journey of faith, Surprised by Joy, written in 1955, Lewis gives us an inveigling definition of joy as 'an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any satisfaction.'
“Here, perhaps, is something we can latch onto as we confront the notion of Lent as a 'joyful season.'
“Lent, in this perspective, is a time for eschewing pleasure in order to be surprised by joy, that unsatisfied desire more desirable than any satisfaction. Conversely, it is a time for recognizing the habit we have of seeking satisfactions that dull the deepest longing of the heart; the habit of having to have and not wanting to want.
“'The very notion of joy,' writes C. S. Lewis, 'makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There to have is to want and to want is to have.'
“Lent would then be a time for discovering what it is we really want, the heart's desire, the restlessness which for Augustine is a symptom of our being made for something we can never possess. Paradoxically, knowing that longing brings joy.
“Joy, no more than happiness, cannot be pursued for its own sake: It is the elusive fruit of a desire which is for something we can never possess, whether God or our neighbor. 'All the value of joy lies in that of which joy was the desiring.'
“As Augustine says at one point, 'startled into self-forgetfulness, I again tasted joy.' We cannot set out to make Lent joyful. It offers joy, however, to those whom exercises of piety and works of charity 'startle into self-forgetfulness.'”
Leo, in the fifth century, wrote,
“...as we are about to celebrate that most eminent of all mysteries, in which the blood Jesus Christ has wiped away all our sins, let us first of all prepare to offer the sacrifice of mercy, so that what we have been given by the goodness of God, we may ourselves show to those who have trespassed against us.
“We must show more liberal bounty toward the poor and those who suffer from all kinds of affliction in order that many voices may give thanks to God and that the relief of those in need may support our fasts.
“Indeed, no other devotion of the faithful is more pleasing to the Lord than that which is directed toward the poor.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote,
“We die when we refuse to stand up for that which is right. We die when we refuse to take a stand for that which is true. So we are going to stand up right here...letting world know that we are determined to be free.”
Posted by John
at 12:01 AM CST
