The Sunday before Lent 2019

From the desk of Fr. Ignatius Waters, cp

Sunday, 3rd March 2019

It’s hard to believe but next Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and Lent means spring and lengthening of days. The gospel today reminds us we’re always in need of spring-cleaning.                                                                                                                       

This is true story.

John was adopted as a tiny baby and always knew he was adopted. In his teens, he had loads of pals but was easily led and was a great worry to his parents. Nothing they said ever got through to him – except this! One day he arrived home and announced that the girlfriend of one of the pals was pregnant, but it wasn’t really a problem because she’d probably get rid of it! The mother who adopted him was shocked and said, “It! Get rid of it!  Listen, John, did you ever think, if your mother thought like that, you wouldn’t be here at all!” And she told me that was the first thing that ever seemed to get through to him. He went pale, his jaw dropped, and it was his turn to be shocked!                                                                                                

I’m convinced that all of us need to be similarly shocked into seeing things. As the gospel today says, we can be blind to many things about ourselves and not know it. Remember when Jesus shocked Peter by telling him he was a Satan? No doubt he didn’t like it at the time and probably didn’t believe it. He knew he wasn’t a saint but not a Satan either! But later in the courtyard, cursing and swearing that he didn’t know the man, he began to see how true it was. We can go through the whole of our lives thinking we’re nice and good and humble, wouldn’t hurt a fly and we don’t see or want to see how we can be a Satan at times, maybe a lot of the time, jealous, sneaky, mean and ambitious.                                                                                                                             

In a book called, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” by Sheldon Kopp, there’s a powerful passage on the need to accept our dark side if we are to avoid its power over us. He gives this example: “A patient comes into therapy complaining that he does not get along with other people; somehow he always manages to say the wrong thing and hurt their feelings. He is really a nice fellow; just he has this uncontrollable neurotic problem. What this man does not want to know is that his “unconscious hostility” is not his problem, it’s his solution! He’s really not the nice fellow he thinks he is; he’s a bastard who wants to hurt other people while still thinking of himself as a nice fellow. If the therapist can guide him into the pit of his own ugly soul, then there may be hope for him. Once this man can see how angry and vindictive he is, he can trace his own story and bring it to the light, instead of being doomed to relive it all the time without awareness. Nothing about us can be changed until it is first accepted.”   That’s obvious, isn’t it, but hard to take!  But isn’t it a thousand times better than never waking up to how selfish, proud, jealous, scheming we can be? Everyone else can see it but we don’t!  Let’s allow the Lord to shock you into life this Lent. It’s a moment of grace when it happens. It can bring a spring to our step and put spring in our hearts!     

The best day in Peter’s life was the day he admitted to himself, “Yes, Lord, I am a Satan!” And he went out and wept bitterly.