First of Lent of Year A
February 2008
We have arrived again in the Liturgical Season of Lent.
From my earliest days I remember it to be a somewhat unpopular time.
We kids were all expected to give up sweets, although, truth to tell, most of us were lucky if we could scrounge a penny or a half penny once or twice a month to buy sweets. We children would sometimes boast to each other about what we had given up for Lent and for how long we had sustained our resolution. Truth and reality often suffered in these exchanges of one-upmanship.
If you want to grow a plant, whether it be indoors or outdoors, you need some sort of soil.
It is the very same in the spiritual life, in our relationship with God.
If our relationship with God is to grow and blossom it must be planted in the soil of truth and reality. Truth and reality are humility.
What is humility? The Virtue of Humility has nothing to do with timidity, self-effacement, bashfulness, fearfulness, tentativeness, hesitancy, indecision, etc.
Humility is an acceptance of unembroidered truth and reality.
Humility is an all pervading attitude of mind and heart which accepts and lives by the truth of the Infinite and the finite.
By the Infinite I mean God, the Supreme Being, Creator of everything that exists, on Whom everything is totally dependent for existence and being.
By the finite I mean everything else that exists, especially me.
Everything that exists is, of necessity, totally dependant on the Infinite Creator whether the Creator or the creature likes it or not.
God is the Creator in whom we live and move and have our being. There is simply no other means of existence.
Because God has given me free will to do as I please, I can easily forget or ignore my total dependence on God for everything I have and am.
This attitude is called pride. Pride is ignoring truth and reality. It is the opposite of humility.
Humility entails having respect for all things. Why? Because God saw all He had made ‘and indeed it was very good.’
Humility entails having extraordinary respect for myself and for other people. Why? Because Gad said ‘let us make man in our own image and likeness.’
Having any meaningful relationship with God is impossible until I open myself to accept truth and reality; that is humility. Otherwise I begin to think that it is something I did which is responsible for my growing relationship with God. God cannot co-operate with this attitude because it is totally untrue.
It is one thing knowing this in my head and another realising it and living by it.
If I spent the whole of Lent contemplating the reality and truth about God and myself it would be time very well spent indeed.