In the Middle
Ages, the penitential disciplines of Lent were minimized somewhat on
this day. And some provisions were made for feasting and celebrations
(for instance, the Pope distributing bread to the poor). And so
this particular Sunday has offered pilgrims through the ages a chance to
lighten up, to pause in Lent with a slight relaxing of austerities. It
is also a time to
reflect
and to gain perspective
on what is yet to come.
At this point in our preparations, we
are feeling the pull toward Holy Week which, of course, starts in two weeks,
and the most concentrated enactment of the events of our salvation.
These events all come to a point within the passion of our Lord Jesus—as we
commemorate His triumphal procession up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday; his
intimate Last Supper with his disciples on Maundy Thursday, followed by the
prayerful agony of surrender in the garden at Gethsemane. Then we
revisit the painful ordeal of the trial and condemnation by Pontius Pilate:
his death for us on the cross; and the hours of waiting and expectation
before the glorious dawn of Resurrection on Easter morning.
But, as
Christians, this, of course, is our journey too As God raised Jesus up
to the heavens, so we anticipate our journey sharing in the fruits of
this Resurrection in our own lives—abiding with God forever.
We are all
participants, in various modes and degrees, in this unique drama to the
cross. And now, while in this years’ Lenten Season of focused prayer and
fasting, we find ourselves in a position to look both ways, forward and
back—back at our beginnings on Ash Wednesday, and forward with anticipation
toward the possible ends God may have in store for us.
I
have a few points on which to offer reflection. Please remember this truth:
the Church in a secular society provides each of us with an opportunity to
participate now
in the ultimate destiny of human life. This is the Church’s mandate
and, if she is faithful to it, her special contribution. All secular
forms of social life can offer only a preliminary satisfaction; the
Church confronts
the person with the ultimate fulfillment of life promised in the coming of
God’s future…The Church
gives the individual a share in his or her’s future salvation.
So, with that
thought what better time than in Lent to recall the truth we knew all along,
that in this secular world, we are all called to keep on doing whatever it
is we have been called to do, through faith.
Whether it is preparing dinner or hauling cargo or tending patients or
filling orders or driving a van load of kids to a basketball game, ….God is
working in
us, in the midst of all this physical stuff. The Holy Spirit this
Lenten Season is translating through
us, the faithfulness that Jesus lived—into the idiom of this world. We
are willingly participating
in that life through the channel He provides ( that’s you and me); we are
the channels, so that the world may know that God in Christ has made
us for good
works, as our
way of life. So…….if we truly seek this way of life we might best
confront the personal stories of our daily lives, this Lenten season, by
doing as Jesus suggests at other times in the Gospel. We should look to
small children who have a wondrous capacity for
living in the present moment.
This is living the moment without digging up the
past and without sweating out the future. This is not living in a “polyanna”
dream world, but it is facing the reality of the moment……making the most of
it. Little children enjoy the moment This is a lesson for us too. I
think that the church seems to be telling us on this refreshment Sunday to
enjoy the moment,
to lighten up, loosen up, eat up, drink up, celebrate up.
Let us not
forget that we are saints who sin. We are not miserable wretches haunted by
a Divine Perfectionist! Furthermore, on a more human level, the Church
seems to be reminding us on refreshment Sunday that rarely do we keep at
anything very long unless there is joy in it. again, like little children,
and unless we do this, resolve can run aground. We will run out of energy
and enthusiasm. All that prayer and fasting and discipline without
some joy and celebration will make for stale saints. We will suffer
through “irritable saint syndrome.”
Furthermore,
a sense of grace, an understanding of God’s unconditional love for the world should
underlie all the disciplines of Lent. The feeding of the multitude serves as
a sacrament of such a relationship. Jesus did not feed the 5000 today
because they deserved it. It wasn’t that they themselves merited the
feast, that they somehow motivated Jesus by their marked goodness toward Him
or toward God. The Scripture never mentions any particular values or
virtues attributed to them at all.
Multiplied
bread and fish, given in grace and received by faith with thanksgiving, is
therefore a pattern for all Christian joy and celebration. God
is love. And God is able. God wants our happiness. God wishes to fill
us too as He did the 5000! This core truth should never be forgotten—even in
Lent. The result for us: we are rescued from taking ourselves so
darned seriously—from becoming dull and depressed—and calling it suffering
for the sake of the Kingdom.
