Tuesday of the 2nd
Week of Lent
February 23, 2016
Sometimes we can allow the call
to conversion to get us focused on ourselves.
We may focus mainly on my sins
and what I must do to repent.
This might be our way of
approaching Lent.
It might be our response to
Isaiah’s very strong call to repentance in today’s first reading.
My experience is that this can
get us on the wrong footing.
Our first step needs to be to
look at Jesus.
When we do this, then we know not
only whom to follow and how to live.
We also know who can heal and
make us whole spiritually.
And, of course, we and our acts
of repentance alone cannot do this.
Instead, it is the power of God
in and through the love of Christ.
Maybe Richard Rohr says it well
when he states that we must make sure that we follow Christ and not just
worship him.
It is Christ and the following of
him that must be the first stage of all repentance.
That leads us to the middle stage:
an awareness of our sinfulness.
And then that very quickly takes
us back to Jesus as the source of forgiveness and healing and wholeness.
If we approach it this way, then
we can be hopeful of the outcome.
As God told the contemplative
Julian of Norwich:
“It was necessary that there should be sin; but all will be well, and
all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
