Lent E-Retreat – Being open to the presence of God…

“God’s Message:  ‘Heaven’s my throne and earth is my footstool.  What sort of house could you build for me?  What holiday spot reserve for me?  I made all this!  I own all this!’  God’s decree:  But there is something I’m looking for:  a person simple and plain, reverently responsive to what I say.’”   (Isaiah 66:1, 2 from The Message, the Bible in Contemporary Language)

There is within many of us a natural desire to do – it’s easier at times to do than it is to be.  Doing is rewarded more often in our culture – schools, civic organizations, even our churches all thrive on doing.  There is nothing wrong with being a do-er.  People who are go-getters and are able to take on leadership and inspire others are very important.  However, in the midst of all our doing, busy-ness and activity, Lent calls us to remember to be… simply be, in the presence of God. 

Receptivity to God’s word implies a desire on our part to listen.  The Greek philosopher Epictetus is credited with sharing the wisdom that the human body as two ears and one mouth, indicative of the fact that, by design, we are to hear twice as much as we are to speak! 

We must remember that listening is not about results, about doing.  To listen is to suspend my thoughts, agenda and desire to control.  It is to be open and vulnerable to the other, be it a spouse, a child, a fellow parishioner, a friend, or someone on the street.  Listening to God can take a life time and it teaches us to put more and more of our own lives into the hands of our loving Creator.  This is an act of faith and the results do not always come as quickly as we’d like.  Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Pierre de Chardin was getting at this when he wrote:

“Trust in the slow work of God. We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown . . . and yet progress is only made by passing through some stages of uncertainty, and that may take a very long time. And so it is with us: our ideas mature gradually . . . We do not try to force them ahead, as though we could be today what only time and grace will make us tomorrow. Only God can say what this will be. We give God the benefit of believing that the Spirit is leading us. So we accept the anxiety of being in suspense and incomplete.”       

• Take some quiet time and ask yourself how well you listen, who you listen to, and what you ‘hear’ when you listen to God in prayer
• How much of your life is about doing?  How do you take time to be?
• Do you ‘trust in the slow work of God’?  Where in your life is the slow work of God unfolding?
• Spend some time in prayer

Lent E-Retreat           Giving to those in need:  Charity is Justice

“Hear this, you who trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land!  “When will the new moon be over”, you ask, “that we may sell our grain, and the Sabbath, that we may display the wheat? We will diminish the ephah, add to the shekel, and fix our scales for cheating!  We will buy the lowly man for silver and the poor man for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!”  The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob:  “Never will I forget a thing they have done!”    (Amos 8:4-7)

Amos was a reluctant prophet.  His first love was work as a rural agrarian – he proclaimed himself a “dresser of sycamore trees” and made it clear that bringing God’s message to God’s people was not something he wanted to do.  However, the gap between rich and poor of his time and the apathy  in terms of faith of those around him drove him to a ministry of confrontation, often fueled by a vision of God’s kingdom based on radical ideas like justice, peace, and caring for the poor, vulnerable and needy.  We call those ideas “radical” because, in our own day, they continue to be seen as such.

It is good to give to those in need, absolutely.  It is our call and a special discipline we try to embrace during Lent.  Direct service opens our hearts and eyes to the needs of others and helps us to see our own lives of bounty.  It is when we begin to question the systems, assumptions, and ‘isms’ (racism, sexism, etc.) that lead to injustice that we can find ourselves on slippery ground.  The great spiritual leader from South America, Dom Helder Camara, was a champion of the poor and dispossessed.  When he began to ask why there was so much poverty and to explore its root causes, he was no longer seen by all as angelic.  Musing about this, he said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint.  When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.” 

During Lent and all year round we have a call, a mandate to be mindful of the needs of others, particularly the most weak, vulnerable and needy.  Civilizations are often judged by the way the weakest and least desirable members of society are treated.  As followers of Jesus, we should find ourselves asking difficult questions and seeking to ensure that the weakest among us are not forgotten. 

Living our faith is something that happens locally.  We may do well to ask ourselves if our thoughts, resources, prayers, actions and attitudes are more like those of Amos and Jesus or if they are more like the wealthy Amos is criticizing in the reading above – just waiting to the next opportunity to ‘get theirs’ regardless of who may get hurt or be marginalized in the process. 

May God bless us, disturb us, and help us to be more prophetic – in our words and especially in our deeds! 

AMEN.