Turn back to God

Happy, blessed, and fruitful Lent! We’re three weeks in — almost at the halfway point! Hopefully your prayer life, your penance, and your sacrificial giving are well in hand. But hopefully this Lenten season kindles within us something brighter and more alive than the normal habits and routines of our faith lives. Because the message is clear in our readings this morning, we are called to something more — to turn away from the evil, confusion, and noise of this world; and to turn back to the Lord in repentance and faith, that we might become the fruit of his kingdom.

All three readings this morning share a common thread of God’s mercy and compassion for his people, as well as occasional punishment and being given another chance for their repeated sins. But there’s a warning there as well. Our first reading from Exodus finds Moses called by God in the Burning Bush to rescue His people from slavery and lead them into the Promised Land, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” St Paul reminds us in our second reading that, even though God is always faithful to His people, when they turn away from God and desire evil things, they will be punished and perish. And Paul ends on a warning we should take to heart: “Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” His point is clear. We have no guarantee of our own salvation.

And Jesus drives that point home in Luke’s Gospel. Our human lives and the world we take for granted are fragile. We only need to look back over the past two years to know that. COVID, nasty politics, civil unrest and insurrection, hate crimes, global warming — there’s lots out there to make us angry. But as I meditated on today’s Gospel, my mind kept coming back to Ukraine. It’s hard to ignore what’s going on there. It’s all over our TV, our news feeds, and social media — but it’s more than that. Terrorism, violence, and death have all been part of most of our lives since the attacks on 9/11 — and even before. But this feels different, closer to home. When we see the pictures, those bombed cities look like ours. Those frightened people could be us. Their voices could be our neighbors.

Consider Kateryna from Luhansk: “The current Russian invasion… began for us like in a Soviet movie. Early in the morning, at 5:15, I was woken up abruptly by the sound of a flying fighter jet. My husband looked at the phone and said that it had begun. After another 15 minutes, we heard a terrible explosion and the house shook.

“I ran to the nursery. The picture that I saw there will remain for me the main illustration of this war. My 10-year-old son — thin, in his underpants, still sleepy — was lying by the bed on the rug, curled up, covering his head with his hands, and at the same time, he was calm.

“He did just as I taught him. Two days before I was indignant that he still did not know how to tie his shoelaces.”

Just as we’re struggling to make sense of what’s happening in Ukraine, the people of Jesus’ time were struggling to understand the meaning of the evil and death they saw in their daily lives. The people came to Jesus to try to understand the meaning of the murder of Galilean pilgrims by Herod in the Temple, and the death of 18 others at a construction site in Siloam. But it could just as easily have been Elena, from Kharkiv, Ukraine, asking for meaning: “On February 28, my friend and her family decided to leave. A rocket hit one of the cars. The whole family burned to death.” Or Anna from Kyiv: “The freaks are shelling the houses. A terrible horror. Two things flew into the yard with a whistle and explosions. Then in a respite, my son Kirill raise his head and says, ‘This is just fireworks in my honor!’ I am amazed by his optimism. Happy birthday, son!”

We struggle to make sense of the world around us, to try and understand WHY. And it becomes all too easy to give in to the anger, the hatred, the despair that bubbles up inside us. But that way leads to death. As Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel, at any moment we could perish, not because we’re bigger sinners, but because, like the Israelites in the wilderness, we get lost in the evil of this world. We turn away and forget the wondrous and loving gifts God gives us every day.

Jesus calls us today to repentance and to love. During Lent, we’re called to prayer, to sacrifice, and to charity. But today, we’re being called to more. Psalm 51, which we pray regularly in the Liturgy of the Hours, says it well: “For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse; my sacrifice, a contrite spirit. A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.” That’s our call this Lent - not just to repent our sins through fasting and sacrifice, but to metanoia, a complete spiritual conversion of our heart.

Very shortly, we’ll offer our prayers for the Ukrainian people, and we’ll take up a special collection as well. And well we should. They need our prayers, our compassion, and our support. Later this week, the entire Church will pray for the consecration of both Ukraine AND Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. So, as we pray this morning for the people of Ukraine, let us pray for the people of Russia and their leaders as well, imperfect sinners just like us. Finally, let us pray to be freed from our anger, that this Lent may become for us a season of renewal and reprieve, a grace period like the fig tree, in which Christ the Divine Gardener cultivates our hearts to bring forth fruits that will last into eternity.