St. Matthew 6:14-21
Romans 13:11-14:4
Have you ever
thought about how our habits shape who we become throughout the course of our
lives? When we invest our time and
energy in something, it rubs off on us. In
fact, it becomes part of us and we become part of it. For example, when we devote hours—and
ultimately, years-- to video games, work, sports, reading, music, or other
anything else, we change as a result, for better or worse. Sometimes in obvious ways and sometimes in
ways too subtle to notice, our activities become our treasures and capture our
hearts, our attention, and our sense of who we are. In one way or another, they
impact every dimension of our lives.
Great Lent begins tomorrow, and it
is a blessed time to put some distance between ourselves and the habits that
are so close to our hearts that we may not even recognize them. As we prepare to follow Jesus Christ to His
passion and glorious resurrection, we must remember that He told us to love God
with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves. None of us does that perfectly, of
course. Most of us do not even come
close, and we waste much of the treasure of our lives in activities that
weaken us spiritually. For example,
usually thinking nothing of it, we judge others with our thoughts and words in
ways that bring condemnation due to our own self-righteousness.
Likewise, we become slaves to our desires
for food, drink, money, entertainment, and pleasure of whatever kind. No matter how much we have, we are never
satisfied. Too many of us have developed
the habit of simply pleasing ourselves and disregarding others. No wonder that we treasure so much else more
than God and neighbor in this life.
As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, it
is time to wake up from our sleep. For
without acknowledging it, we have all been stumbling in the dark, seeking first
that which cannot satisfy us, wasting our lives on foolishness. Now that Lent is upon us, it is time to
acknowledge the truth and to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
St. Paul’s warning is for every
single one of us because we have all fallen short of participating fully in the
healing that our Savior has brought to the world. For example, we tend to focus on the wrongs
of others and to be blind to many of our own failings. Instead of using food, entertainment, or other
pleasures with self-restraint so that they have their proper place in our lives,
we indulge ourselves and become their slaves—which means that we become the
slaves of our own self-centered desires. We selfishly love our money, possessions, and
comfort, and find it so hard to be generous with the needy. We are also stingy
with the time and attention we give to those who need our friendship and
encouragement. In other words, we have been
shaped by the habit of loving ourselves
and the things that help us get what we want.
Too often, that is what our lives revolve around; we have become our own treasure.
In order to follow Jesus Christ to
His cross and glorious resurrection, we must develop new habits that will
change us in holy ways and reorient us toward our true treasure. The Savior calls us to invest ourselves in Him, to offer
our time, energy, possessions, relationships, and bodily appetites for the
healing, fulfillment, and transformation of the Kingdom. “Where your treasure is, there will your
heart be also.” If we want to be pure of
heart, if we want to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors
as ourselves, we must learn to treasure the new life that Christ has brought to
the world. We do that by taking
deliberate, intentional steps to redirect our hearts to Him, by investing the
treasure of our lives in the blessed habits of the Kingdom.
First on the list is forgiveness,
one of the hardest things to do in life because it requires humility. How easy and seductive it is to fixate on the
wrongs other have done us, to judge them
again and again in our minds, and to make ourselves feel better by looking
down on those who have wronged us. But
when we do so, we simply make provision for the flesh and fulfill its
lusts. We sink deeper and deeper into a
spiral of self-righteous delusion which blinds us to the truth that we stand in
constant need of mercy and are in no position to judge anyone else.
Our Lord teaches clearly that, if we
refuse to forgive others, the Father will not forgive us. If we refuse to forgive others, we obviously do
not love our neighbors as ourselves. Whenever
we want God to apply one standard to us, while we apply another to other people,
we become idolaters who worship only ourselves.
To refuse to forgive is to refuse to put on the Lord Jesus Christ; it is
to refuse to participate in His mercy and compassion as a partaker of the
Divine Nature. If the habits of judgment
and condemnation shape our lives, we will become the sort of people who have no
interest in following our Savior to His Cross and resurrection. We will end up worshiping another god made in our own image.
Given our current spiritual state, forgiveness
may seem impossible to us at times. Like
healing from any serious disease, it is a journey or process that can take a
long time and has its ups and downs. But
the more effort we place in developing the habits of forgiving others, of
ignoring memories of past wrongs, and of rebuilding broken relationships as best
we can, the more progress we will make in learning to love Christ in our
neighbors, even in those who have offended us.
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” We
should all begin this Lent with Forgiveness Vespers today at 6 pm. There is no better way to begin investing
ourselves in the habit of forgiveness such that our hearts will follow.
Fasting is surely no one’s favorite
topic. In a culture of fast food where
more people struggle with eating too much than with eating too little, fasting
hits us where we live. We have become so accustomed to convenience,
self-indulgence, and immediate gratification that we have developed the habits
of self-centeredness, impatience, and addiction to pleasure. We are what we eat, and if we continue to invest
our lives in these unholy habits, we will become the kind of people who find it
impossible to make room in our hearts for the love of God and neighbor. We will also not be able to restrain our
desires, especially those that involve bodily appetites. Too often, gluttony is the mother of
adultery, promiscuity, addiction to pornography, and other sexual sins.
In secret and without drawing
attention to ourselves, we develop the habit in Lent of saying “no thank you” to
rich foods and large portions in a way appropriate to our health and life
circumstances. No matter our particular
situation, we can all identify habits of self-indulgence from which we can abstain,
whether they involve food or something else. Fasting and self-restraint do not heal our passions
instantaneously, but when done with humility, these are powerful tools for
waking ourselves up, for developing the habit of placing the treasure of our
lives in the hands of the Lord. By
fasting this Lent as best we can, we will learn to redirect our hearts to our
true treasure in God. We learn to direct
our desires ultimately to Him.
Of course, the most obvious kind of
investment involves money, and today we hear our Lord’s teaching to lay up
treasures in heaven, not simply on earth.
If we use our money only for ourselves, we will be in the habit of
loving only ourselves, which is simply another way of saying that we will make
provision only for the flesh to fulfill its lusts. We may put on the Lord Jesus Christ, however,
by using our financial resources for a heavenly purpose, especially in helping
the needy with whom our Savior identified Himself. That is why we should all take home a Food
for Hungry People container and put money in it throughout Lent, especially
when fasting reduces our grocery or restaurant bill. How much of our treasure should we put in? Enough to direct our hearts to God and
neighbor. At the very least, we can all
afford to put in our spare change as a way of beginning to cultivate the holy
habit of generosity to those in whom we encounter Jesus Christ.
Lent is about to begin. It is time to wake up and accept the challenging
blessing of the coming weeks. It is time
to invest ourselves in the new life that Jesus Christ has brought to the world.
Now is the time to cultivate the holy habits that will make us the kind of people
who treasure our Lord above all else. And when that happens, we will be
prepared to follow Him to His Cross and then to behold the glory of His
resurrection on the third day. That is
the purpose of Great Lent. 
No comments:
Post a Comment