Paul Claudet writes The Gospels show us the Savior coming to the soul and imparting truth and virtue by the touch of a hand, the brushing of a garment, a bit of moistened earth applied to the locked eyelids. One look from him is enough to make an apostle out of that idler yawning under the fig tree…

What Paul writes is poetic. Many times words or phrases from the gospel touch our hearts, and we feel inspired and lifted up. But such sentiments, wonderful as they are, often fail us when life tumbles and we are grasping for something solid. Just like Bartholomew, being moved by the words of Jesus is not enough. When his life tumbled, and suffering surrounded him and his Master, Bartholomew, along with the all the other apostles, deserted Jesus in the garden. They had heard and were amazed at what Jesus said. But they had not imbibed those words at a deeper level. They had to realize that the beauty of Jesus words give life only when we make them our own.

There are times in our lives when the words that once sounded poetic and profound no longer inspire. That is a good time for us, a time laden with grace, because it brings us to a new awareness. It brings us to a point where we cannot continue as passive spectators. If we allow it, the very questioning we begin opens up the truths we believe in, allowing us to delve deeper. Only when we find better answers, ones brought out by our own ponderings and not some pious sentiment found in a book, will we find strength in Jesus words.

The antiphon for Wednesday of the Fourth week of Lent says Lord, in your great love, answer me. (Ps 68:14) How does God answer?

Is 49 says I will never forget you… on the day of salvation I help you…For the Lord comforts his people.

All these passages taken from the readings remind us of God’s answer–hope. When we are in need, God tells us that He is there beside us, ready to help, comfort, and console.

Msgr. Luigi Giussani writes, hope is an energy, the energy of vigilance, and energy that continually pierces through, pierces continually through the shadows.

Who of us do not have shadows? They are part and parcel of human life. The more conscious you become of your own spiritual journey, the sharper will your awareness be, and you will see that dark cloud which wants nothing better than to envelope one within its wall of darkness.

Again, Giussani: The energy of hope breaks, perforates the hard walls of the tomb in which distraction, intemperance and worries enclose us. It’s not the disappearance of distraction, intemperance or worries; it’s that in the midst of distraction, worries and intemperance, unconquerable hope continually forms.

What more can we ask from God?

We’ve heard many reflections on the Prodigal Son, the humility of the returning son, the generosity of the Father. But we must not forget, the Gospel tells us that “a father had two sons.” We need to also reflect on the actions and words of the elder.

The Elder son is a model child. He has stayed with his father, obeyed all the commands, shown his faithfulness. But the Elder son had one fault: he was unconscious. His unconscious state is obvious in his lack of “need”. He did not seek out the Father because he felt he had no need of him. 

Many of us can identify with the Elder son, finding it hard to read of the prodigal son returning after behaving in such a ghastly manner and being treated like a prince. Such treatment seems to trivialize faithfulness, making it seem less noble.

But Jesus tells us, God doesn’t seek faithfulness so much as He seeks reciprocity. Love yearns for a return.  But before we can give back, we must  realize where we stand; we must realize that no amount of faithfulness will make us righteousness before God. God seeks only a “humble and contrite heart”. The elder son is guilty of the blindness many of us live with, blindness that is debilitating because it insists that we need nothing.

Paul speaks of the “new creation”. Like metanoia, the new creation is not something we can do once and for all. Conversion only sets us on a path; along that path there are many choices. As humans, we do fail, we do need, we do seek. Perhaps the words of the Elder, “and you have not so much as given me a calf to celebrate with my friends” tells us the true problem. The elder son wasn’t looking to be with the father. He looked to celebrate with his friends. He felt no need of his father, because he had obeyed all the commands. Had he sought to be with the father, seeking to know him better, he too could have joined in the celebration, he too could have come “back to life.”

Contemplation. Once considered the realm of monastics. Yet all are called to contemplation, not to be entered into just for enlightenment, or to heighten my consciousness, or to find greater peace and inner serenity, or even just to feel more intimate and connected with God. That may be the reason we begin such a practice. But it will not reveal its riches to us. Do learn them, we first have to be convinced by St Paul to rather be transformed in the newness of your mind, so as to determine for yourselves what is the good and pleasing and perfect will of God. Rom 12:2

What Paul speaks of in being transformed in the newness of your mind we know as metanoia, a radical turning of one’s life, heart, soul, will, everything to God. We turn toward God until we are in a face to face encounter with him. Movement is the key here, turning toward, continually. Without the movement of the soul turning, the concept of radical holds no meaning.

St. Bernard writes For contemplating it [the Father] with unveiled face [the result of metanoia] we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord. Speaking of contemplation, John Eudes Bamberger OCSO writes in CSQ (43.4 2008) that “…our Cistercian Fathers…bear witness to their dynamic understanding of the tradition that affirms the purpose of our way of life [is] to be a radical transformation of our very being and not merely the adaptation to the subculture of the cloister….divinization, which is the highest expression of transformation, as in the well-known saying of Saint Bernard: Sic affici deificari est (Dil 10)

To seek contemplation is to seek metanoia, to seek transformation…to become a completely new person, Jesus Christ.

Simon Tugwell, OP writes Saint Thomas says desire is the faculty which receives, so that the bigger our desire is, the more we can receive…Our part in this life is to learn to want largely and earnestly enough to make us capable of the infinite rightness of God’s kingdom…The more we try to tame and reduce ourselves and our desires and hopes, the more we deceive and distort ourselves. We are made for God and nothing less will really satisfy us.

Tugwell is speaking of the appetites, and our oft misunderstanding of the role they should play in our lives and hearts. Somehow, many of us feel that our appetites lead us to sin, and should be curtailed with fasts, penances, denial of all sorts. Tugwell says, you are misunderstanding the role they are meant to play. What we take as our tendency for sin isn’t an appetite, but a sickness. That needs healing . But the appetites are our desire for goodness [which] is really a much more robust desire than any alleged desire for evil.

Mindful of Thomas Merton’s words, that Lent is not a season of punishment so much as one of healing we have a good place to start.