Fourth Monday through Fifth Sunday in Lent

Fourth Monday in Lent: Miraculous Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the true miracle cure that is given to the whole world. I don’t think it is possible to comprehend what Christ’s forgiveness means in our lives. We can open its miraculous powers when we entrust the Holy Spirit to release the release the cleansing and healing powers of forgiveness within our souls.

The reason most of us don’t experience the miracle powers of forgiveness is because it goes completely against our sin nature to forgive, thus we don’t fully commit to the process. When Christians try to forgive in their own strength, it dilutes forgiveness’ power. If forgiveness does not improve your soul, you are probably acting without the Spirit’s power.

Shamefully, I have to admit that I know firsthand what happens in my soul when I have forgiven with God’s Spirit, yet still struggle to forgive after being offended. Though it is the most peaceful, supernatural, hopeful, spiritually productive experience of my life, I don’t automatically forgive without conviction from God. What’s up with that? I still don’t have the answer. It makes no sense to hang on to hurts when forgiveness heals me from all the wounds that are inflicted. I continue to struggle but I always get the same results after I finally surrender—a miracle transformation of my soul.

In this season of Lent we are lead to focus on repentance and our own sinfulness. I desire to do this, and I hope that by becoming more aware of my constant failure to live up to the life God invites me to experience that a byproduct of my sin is to bask in the forgiveness that covers my failures.

Though I fail to forgive immediately, I also fail to consider that enormity of my experience of forgiveness. I want to break down the facts of the Lenten season. I want to embrace the utter magnitude of my personal forgiveness. When I think of myself, just focusing on my own sins, I should be overwhelmed to consider that God can, will and desires to forgive through Christ.

I love the story Jesus told about the ungrateful servant in Matthew 18. I get why He told it. I need that story to put my own forgiveness in perspective. I need to see that anytime I am unwilling to forgive I am suffering total amnesia about the boundless forgiveness I have been granted!

The point of the story needs to be first in my mind. In Matthew 18:23 Jesus sets the stage for the story He told:

Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.

Lent helps me take account of where I might stand when the King of Kings wants to settle accounts with me. When the account books are open, how will I stand? I have absolutely no hope without God’s forgiveness.

This is why I open my soul wide to the Lenten season. It guides me to focus on daily repentance as a preparation for Easter. If God responds to my sinful failures with forgiveness, then I can’t do anything else.

Fourth Tuesday in Lent: The Lesson of Judas

I didn’t expect to be so affected by the life of Judas Iscariot. For most of my Christian life, when I came across the infamous story of Judas Iscariot, I breathed a sigh of relief that I was nothing like him. Anyone would feel that way. No one wants to identify with Judas. In fact, the other Judas is called NOT Iscariot (John 14:22)!

During Orthodox Holy Week observance and I attended church with my son. I went to several services, and I cannot believe how often Judas was highlighted. It was, after all, Holy Week. It was the week to get hearts prepared to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! Shouldn’t we hide Judas Iscariot and his betrayal of Jesus under the rug? Isn’t it the dirty little secret of the Christian story that we would rather not talk about? And if we do mention it, shouldn’t we do so quickly and not spend time thinking about something so scandalous?

In service after service we stopped to ponder the behavior of Judas, the betrayer of Jesus. We didn’t look at him to make us feel better about ourselves. Rather, we look at him as a warning for our own souls. We examine his lack of understanding of who Jesus said He was. We look at our own preference to the good of this world (greed) above honoring Jesus. We face that Judas made a deliberate decision to plot against Jesus. I never thought that I would be able to relate so much to Judas, the betrayer of Jesus.

Like Judas, I choose the riches of this world above the incomparable riches of knowing Jesus Christ. Like Judas, my own misunderstanding of what God is doing in my life leads me to oppose His work rather than commit to the mystery. Like Judas, I can be the most wretched of men. Like Judas, I can judge others who are worshipping God in an extravagant fashion (Mary anointing Jesus with perfume).

So I have a lot to learn from Judas. In Israel, St. Onuphrius Monastery was built over the cemetery that was known as the field of blood (Matthew 27:8), purchased after Judas attempted to return his 30 pieces of silver. I was told the reason this monastery was built in this place is that we must never forget the deeds of Judas and must constantly examine our own lives against the disease of sin that Judas exhibited. Judas let Satan enter into his heart so completely that he did not see the mercy of Christ.

Though I can act like Judas in many ways—judging other Christians, misunderstanding God’s work, giving into my greed for the goods of this world, making deliberate decisions to disobey Jesus— with God’s help I can recognize these disparities and quickly come home to Jesus. Judas’ most fatal mistake was to take his guilt and shame over betraying Jesus to the Pharisees for redemption. Once he saw what He had done to Jesus, he tried to fix it himself by seeking help from religion—the Temple. There he found no hope or answers for his sin-infested soul. The worst misdeed of Judas was to demonstrate total hopelessness in Jesus by attempting to fix what was so wrong inside of him himself. The only hope for our souls is Jesus. May I never get to the place that Judas sunk. His decisions and actions led to death—physically and spiritually (Matthew 27:3-10).

Though my lessons from being asked to think about the deeds and actions of Judas have humbled and surprised me, they are good and holy lessons. I have learned that Judas’ story is not one to push away in the closet but one to constantly use to examine my own heart and soul. I have a lot to learn from Judas.

Fourth Wednesday in Lent: What a Wonderful God We Love

Jesus said it best: Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little (Luke 7:47). The Lenten Season that focuses on penitence and being aware of the cost of Easter is the perfect setting for true sinners to experience deeper love for God.

The more God’s love means to you, the more you become aware of how far you have fallen. A soul that feels the depth of the love of God has no other response than to love God in a great way. Before we even get to the cross, death, burial and resurrection, the season of repentance itself brings great spiritual healing.

Did you wake up today amazed that God loves you as much as He does? If not, I’m not sure you are really serious about your repentance. Eckhart explains: “With the love of God, people will be able to accept and endure whatever happens to them. They will gently forgive the harm that is done to them. There is nothing else in human experience that will bring you as close to God or form a more certain bond. If you take this hook, everything about you belongs to God. The more hooked you are on God, the more freedom you will experience.”

How does getting hooked on God happen? If you find it hard to love God, take an honest look at yourself. Then consider the cross of Christ and what sacrifice and suffering He endured to cover the sins you alone have committed. If you do this honestly, you will have no other conclusion than to consider what a wonderful God we love.

If you try that and still come up empty but you really want to know God’s amazing love for you, look within. Ask God to help you see Him. Ask Him to open your heart, mind and spirit to His presence, goodness and love for you. Don’t give up. Put feeling the love of God on your heart and don’t give up until you get it. Francois de Fenelon said, “People think as they do because they do not know God. If they knew him they would love him.”

Experiencing the love of God is not simple. Your soul was created to live in His love and God wants to nothing more than give His love to you. Yet, everything in the world will draw you away from the reality of heaven and God’s love. But if you look through eyes that believe in God’s love, you will see that the world is full of the love of God. Honest repentance will lead you to conclude that you serve a wise, wonderful, loving God.

Fourth Thursday in Lent: Lenten Lessons

As Holy Week approaches, it seems a good time to think back on the past five weeks of Lent and consider the lessons we have learned. We can take these lessons into Holy Week to help us connect more deeply to the familiar yet incomprehensible story that illuminates the reach of God’s love.

We have considered the miracle, love, celebration and reality of forgiveness this Lenten season. I'm grateful that I have taken on a Lenten fast and the instruction of the church fathers to reconsider my sinful state before a Holy God. I'm so quick to ignore the sinfulness that I wake up to every day. I grow accustomed to my patterns of sin and gloss over them to focus on more important things like other people’s sins, my problems, my dreams and more. Even with all the sins I have considered this Lent, I know that I have continued my pattern of overlooking many sins that are right in front of me. This problem of sin is overwhelming.

Once I learn how sinful my sin really is, I am ready for Holy Week. I need Holy Week and all that happened more than I will ever know. I am eager to relearn the lessons from the events of Easter recorded in the Gospels that have become so familiar to me. I want them to cross the barriers my sinful soul puts up against receiving the fullness of God’s love.

Another lesson I learn from a Lenten fast is how amazing God’s love really is. The days that I gloss over my sin and never consider how offensive I am to my Holy-All-Wise God, I don't connect deeply with His love for me. However, in the Lenten season, when my soul agrees to the cleansing power of confession, I become stumped by the magnitude of God’s grace. God’s love and forgiveness go hand-in-hand. He alone makes me want to be better, and he alone can actually make me better.

Paul described it so well in Philippians 2:12-13:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

These scriptures inform me that my desire for obedience will only be fulfilled as I open my soul to the power of God to deliver me from sin.

These lessons from Lent are important to learn so that we can live in this world in a manner that pleases God. I adopted a puppy during Lent. He is the sweetest and cutest puppy to me. He has a lot to learn. He has strong tendencies to be the alpha dog. It is vital that I teach him how he must behave to live in my house with all who enter. If he can't learn to get along with the cat, children, and people who come into my house, he cannot be with me. I teach him because I love him and I want him to be with me. It is the same way with God. God calls my attention to my sin, offers Himself to cover the cost of my sin, and shows me the depth of His love for one purpose. He wants me to be with Him where He is. The lessons of Lent are lifetime lessons. I'm learning how to live so that I can get along with my Master and all who live with Him in heavenly realms.

Fourth Friday in Lent: Taking Back Sunday

The Sunday before the first Easter Sunday could have been the night that Simon held a dinner in Jesus’ honor in Bethany. John 12:1 says: “Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.” The day of the week for this gets a little confusing since six days before Passover is either Friday or Saturday evening, two unlikely dates for a supper. What we do know is that Lazarus was there reclining at the table (after he had been resurrected from the dead!), and Martha was serving. This was the dinner where Mary, their sister, poured the expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. We don’t know it was Sunday for sure, but we do know that the Sunday before Easter Sunday everyone but Jesus had high hopes of the future and pretty much thought they knew what God was going to do in their new leader.

It was the calm before the storm. It was a day that made sense. They got up and went about the business they had been doing for the past three years. Miracles were ordinary for them. It seemed normal to be eating with a man who was once dead for four days. They never knew when or where to expect a miracle, yet they felt certain miracles would continue wherever Jesus was.

That Sunday was just an ordinary day in the life of Jesus and His disciples—the Triumphant entry aside. It was, after all, what they expected to happen. Jesus was the Messiah and they thought He would soon reign like David over an earthly throne from Jerusalem. Sunday was the day after the Sabbath, the day to get back to work and on with the challenges of the week ahead. The theological debates were laid aside for the practical realities of how to get enough food to eat for the next week. Dinners needed to be cooked and eaten, laundry needed to be folded, business needed to be conducted and polite interchanges were to be made. No one would have thought that one week from this day the whole world would be turned upside down. No one could understand that something more powerful that 1,000 atom bombs was about to explode the spiritual realities with which we all live with.

Who knows what was going through Mary’s mind? I think of her as one of those very sensitive women who are quick to obey the promptings of the Spirit of God without having to understand the why in order to obey. She heard about the dinner and knew she could attend and wouldn’t miss another chance to be with Jesus. As she left for the dinner, she followed her heart to pick up that perfume of pure nard worth a year’s wages. Did she have in mind what she would end up doing at the dinner when she left? I’m not sure. Maybe she was bringing it so the disciples could use it to anoint others for spiritual purposes. Maybe she wanted to give the jar to Jesus, but didn’t consider pouring its entire contents on Him. That doesn’t even make sense. The disciples objected to her apparent waste of money. Mary’s character doesn’t seem impractical, except that when it comes to spiritual matters, like the earlier dinner at her sister’s Martha’s home, she knew when the dishes could wait.

Jesus Himself defended her actions and proclaimed that what she did should be remembered always, explaining that she was anointing Him for burial. Her story is contained in all four gospels (John 12:1-8, Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:3-9 and Luke 7:37-39).
As we enter into Holy Week, may we be sensitive to the promptings of God’s Spirit in our souls and not miss out on once in a lifetime opportunities to follow the Spirit’s leadings to spiritual blessings.

 Fourth Saturday in Lent: Righteous Sacrifice

Moses wrote Deuteronomy as his last will and testament. He recalls the work of God in the lives of the nation of Israel. They are the great nation from whom God will bring our great salvation through Jesus Christ. They had important work ahead of them. There was something very important he wanted them to understand about righteousness and God’s blessing. In Deuteronomy 9:6 Moses makes it clear: “Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.” We, too, need to understand that we are a stiff-necked people before we can even come close to offering righteous sacrifice to God.

David’s example in Psalm 51 shows the progression from wickedness to righteous sacrifice. Righteous sacrifice can only be brought before God from a person with a broken and contrite heart before Him (Ps 51:17). Like the walls of Jerusalem, the walls of our hearts must be built up against wickedness (Ps 51:18). What would it take for us to love righteousness? Psalm 45:7 tells us to love righteousness and hate wickedness.

We all know the kind of wickedness we have purposely chosen to avoid. The old saying went, I don't smoke and I don't chew and I don't go with girls who do. Everyone reading this has their own standard of wickedness that they stay away from. We draw a line in the sand and call one side safe and the other wicked. That might serve you well in some ways, but understand this: it is not the kind of righteousness that produces righteous sacrifice. Do you hate the wickedness that leads your heart to write your weekly check to the church like you write your monthly bill to insure your possessions? Does it feel wicked to attempt to control God? Do you call it wicked when your heart is full of judgment for others who believe differently than you or who are caught in sin? Do you ever feel wicked when you frivolously waste money, energy, electricity on selfish greed?

The Lenten season is a season of opening our hearts to the reality of just how wicked wickedness is. Really seeing wickedness leads to contriteness. A contrite heart leads to gratefulness. A grateful heart leads to righteous sacrifice.

During the Lenten season we remember the most righteous sacrifice of one woman every time we remember the realities of Holy Week. We remember her sacrifice because Jesus told us to. He wants us to realize that righteous sacrifice is possible. Mary of Bethany got in touch with her utter unrighteousness before Jesus. In response she was led by the Spirit to bring righteous sacrifice to Jesus the week of His death. She brought a jar of pure nard, worth a whole year’s wages, and poured it over his head, anointing Him for His death. Jesus wants us to think about Mary’s righteous sacrifice so we might learn what a righteous sacrifice is all about. He said: “I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her” (Matthew 26:13).

Let the Spirit bring you to righteous sacrifice through a contrite heart that leads to repentance that leads to gratefulness that offers righteous sacrifice.

Fifth Sunday in Lent: Desperately Seeking Righteousness

As we pause in preparation for Easter, we think about why it was all so necessary. Why are we spiritually desperate for righteousness? Where can we look for righteousness? Why is the world deplete of righteousness?

Righteousness is not on the mind of most people when they wake up each morning. It’s not my top priority. If you are like me, there are many other things on your mind when you first wake up. We focus on our bodily needs for food, our relationships needs, and our self-esteem needs. Acquiring righteousness is not a high priority on our daily to-do list because we don't think we have a great need for righteousness.

Jesus understood that righteousness is what we need most from our time on this earth because we have to have it to spend eternity with God. From Jesus’ perspective it is the basic need of all humans. We would never know how desperate we are for righteousness if God had not entered our world to show us the problem. We only become desperate for righteousness when God shows us that we don't have it! Even then, we don't fully understand what righteousness is all about.

The Lenten season is the perfect time to consider the reality of righteousness. We call our bodies, minds and spirits to consider our plight of unrighteousness through focusing on repentance. We take forty days to wake up our souls to think differently. We force ourselves to face the realities we are often too distracted to consider. With the cross, burial, and resurrection in mind, we ponder what it was really all about. Why did Jesus have to suffer so much in order for us to get righteousness?

Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” This verse is the great conclusion to Jesus’ words to us about worry from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus proliferates on the agony and senselessness of worry. Knowing our souls and how distracted we get about what we will eat, what we will wear and how we will look, He invites us instead to focus our desperation on the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Jesus tells us that God has taken care of those other needs, so expect Him to make sure you have enough to eat, something to wear and a place to sleep tonight. Instead of worrying about the things of this world, focus your attention on the spiritual realities of this world. Think about God and why He has put you here at this time in the history of the universe. Open your eyes to His kingdom work and desire to live in the spiritual world.

St. John of the Cross has been a great guide to me in pursing righteousness. He tells us the spiritual journey really takes off after a Dark Night of the Senses in which we find ourselves freed up from the worries of the world. St. John of the Cross explains:

“Hence, we call this nakedness a night for the soul, for we are not discussing the mere lack of things; this lack will not divest the soul if it craves for all these objects. We are dealing with the denudation of the soul’s appetites and gratifications. This is what leaves it free and empty of all things, even though it possesses them. Since the things of the world cannot enter the soul, they are not in themselves an encumbrance or harm to it; rather, it is the will and appetite dwelling within that cause the damage when set on these things.”
(The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriquez. ICS Publications Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, D.C., 1991, p. 123)

If I am to follow Jesus’ instruction of desperately seeking righteousness (Matthew 6:33), then I stop seeking my natural appetites and gratifications. Try desperately to seek righteousness? You can't do it without God’s help, but just a taste of it will give your soul true freedom.

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