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Lent is a season of being invited by God in a deeply personal way. "Come back to
me, with all of your heart," our Lord beckons. "We will," we respond, but we
aren’t quite ready yet, our hearts are not prepared. We want to squirm, evade,
avoid. Our souls not yet perfect. We are not ready for God to love us.
Yes, of course we want to have a deeper relationship with God, we tell ourselves
earnestly. And we will….Soon. God calls to us again: Come back to me, with all
of your heart.
Ok, ok, I really will. Just a few more things to do at work. Let me spend a
little more time in prayer first. Let me get to Reconciliation. Let me clean my
oven, tidy my closets. Sell my yoke of oxen. Check a field I have purchased….
Come back to me, with all of your heart.
It is an extraordinary invitation to each one of us. To me in a personal,
individual way. God invites me to drop the defenses that I hold up between
myself and God. All God wants is for me to realize that my standards, my way of
judging and loving are so very different from God’s way, and so much smaller.
God offers an entire Lent season, an entire lifetime, of loving me
unconditionally, no matter what I have done or how much I think I have hidden
from God.
From the first day of Lent, the scripture readings make God's call to us
clear: "Return to me with your whole heart."
"A clean heart create for me, O God," Psalm 51 offers. "Give me back the joy of
your salvation." That is exactly what our loving God wants to give us, the joy
of salvation.
In North America, Lent falls in winter and these days are cold and dark, perfect
for hiding ourselves indoors, perfect for hiding from God - or so we imagine.
But our God is insistent, loving, gently prodding. God is the parent of the
Prodigal Child, waiting faithfully, eagerly on the road for our return, night
after night. There are no folded arms and stern judging stares, only the
straining eyes of a parent eager for our return, longing to embrace us and
rejoice in us.
Yet we spend so much time trying to think of how to return and what to say, how
to begin the conversation. It’s only when we finally appear after so much time
away, embarrassed and confused, that we understand we don’t have to say
anything. We only have to show up.
Look up there on the road ahead of us: our loving God is jumping up and down for
joy. The invitation to us has been heard. We have returned home!
But, wait... What stops us from this great reunion? What keeps us from accepting
this invitation to something deeper in our lives with God? We feel in our hearts
that there are things we should say first: "wait…but…if only" and finally, "If
God really knew about me…"
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. Only the joy that we have turned to God
and that like a loving father or mother, God is smothering us with embraces and
joyful cries. We have returned!
Come back to me, with all of your heart.
Our acceptance of this call, this appeal to our hearts is simple if we can only
get beyond the fear. All we have to do is say to our Lord, "I'm here. Where do I
start? Yes, I want to be with you." Our hearts have been opened and we have
taken the first step toward the rejoicing parent on the road. No explanations
are necessary, only to pause and picture in our hearts the joyfully loving and
unblinking gaze of God that falls on us.
What's the next step on our journey home? We could take the earliest moments of
our day, before we have gotten out of bed to thank God for such a loving
invitation and ask for help in opening our hearts to it. We could read about
beginning our Lenten patterns. We could remember throughout the day the
invitation that has moved our hearts: Come back to me, with all of your heart.
And we can rejoice along with God.
That is the invitation of each day of Lent. Today is the day to accept it.
Source: Creighton University Online Ministries
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