We oftentimes think of Lent as a forty-day period for repentance from sin through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. While those penitential practices represent sound, traditional Catholic Lenten penitential “actions,” they’re rooted in and grow from something that’s fundamentally more important: The promise we heard on Christmas Eve—“he shall be named ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’.”
Not rooting our traditional Lenten penitential actions in that fundamental promise—that “God is with us”—is to miss the entire point of this forty-day season. While, yes, it provides an extended period of time for those actions, it’s more fundamentally the annual period of time to contemplate how, like the Prodigal Son, we’ve knowingly or unknowingly turned our backs on God and our personal need to atone for that fact. Aware of Christmas Eve’s promise, it’s not God who has turned away from us but we who have turned away from God. Rather than living in freedom under grace and full of hope in the resurrection of the dead, we’ve lived instead as slaves of the law, the only end of which is death.
We heard of this propensity on the part of humanoids to turn their backs on God in today’s first reading where, despite their sin and disbelief, God continued to be with the Hebrew people in Egypt where they were enslaved. Even their Exodus from Egyptian slavery through the Desert of Sin didn’t remind or convince the Hebrew people that God was with them. Instead, they grumbled and complained, worshiped a Golden Calf, and plotted treachery to depose God’s anointed one, Moses. As the Hebrew people were on the verge of finally entering the Promised Land, Moses reminded the Hebrew people that everything they have achieved—freedom from slavery, a promised homeland, and even the food they eat and water they drink—are God’s gifts to them providing the “proof” that God—“Emmanuel”—is with them. Setting the first fruits of their labors before God, Moses reminds the Hebrew people, “You shall bow down in His presence.”
The liturgy Moses prescribed for the Hebrew people symbolizes the liturgy that, as Catholics, we celebrate each Sunday. Our purpose is to recall that everything we have in life is God’s gift and provides us definitive proof that God—Emmanuel—is indeed with us. Recalling that evidence, we present the first fruits of our labors to God—the first fruits of our marriages, families, homes, and work as well as our hopes and fears, successes and failures, and virtues and vices...the whole package. Then, we’re reminded to “lift up your hearts” and to “give thanks to the Lord or God.” Why? It’s “truly right and just, our duty and our salvation always and everywhere to give You thanks, Lord almighty God.”
For “sleepy” Catholics, those words express nothing more than a rote, routine, and pious sentiments that fulfill the letter of the law…they’re simply part and parcel of “attending” Mass. Experiencing little, if anything, that God is with them, “sleepy” Catholics spend their days fretting about everything they want but don’t possess, others whose imperfections render them unworthy and undeserving of respect and care, evidence of evil that makes their longed-for happiness something that’s yearned for but never achieved. For “sleepy” Catholics, God is the “Great Absent One” of their lives who has turned away from them when, in truth, its they who have turned their backs on God. The “proof” evidences itself in a life that’s characterized by a fundamental lack of joy and gratitude for God’s many blessings.
Unlike the Psalmist, “sleepy” Catholics don’t cry out “Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble” because they have turned their backs on God and believe they’re alone in their troubles.
The failure to present the first fruits of our labors, to lift up our hearts, and to give thanks to the Lord our God is to fail in our first and primary duty—one that’s prior even to family and country. And, in so doing, we forsake the gift of salvation won for us through the passion, death, and resurrection of God’s only begotten Son.
“WOKE” Catholics know and understand they don’t live on bread alone, on having everything they’d like to possess, having others at their beck and call, or demanding miraculous proofs that God is with them. Instead, “WOKE” Catholics live, as Jesus did, in the abiding awareness that God is with them. They regularly take time to go out into the desert—a place of solitude—to nurture and sustain their awareness of God’s presence and how they might abide in God in every moment of each day.
Back in 1895, a humble, uneducated religious brother named Brother Lawrence called the spiritual discipline this awareness requires “the practice of the presence of God.”
In the hustle and bustle of daily life, it’s so easy to forget that God is always with us. But what Brother Lawrence discovered the greatest secret of life on earth: Living in God’s presence in a single, unending act. With God having breathed His divine Spirit into the depths of our soul, Brother Lawrence wrote in his little book, all that’s required is to open our hearts to receive God and His loving presence in the ordinary, pedestrian events characterizing each day.
To the degree than any of us is a “sleepy” Catholic—and each of us is to one degree or another—how might we open our hearts to receive God and His loving presence through the ordinary, pedestrian events characterizing each day and return—to turn back again—to God...as “WOKE” Catholics?
Brother Lawrence’s answer is simple: By consciously living in the awareness that “God is with us” as we complete every task we perform, no matter however menial.
While it’s challenging and difficult to master this spiritual discipline in any kind of significant and consistent way, Brother Lawrence teaches us that it is possible to learn to live with in the continuous awareness of God’s presence. All that’s required to achieve this reality, first, is to desire it—to really want it—and, second, to develop the persistence it takes to engage in the practice throughout each day.
Moreover, those who strive to practice living in the presence of God each and every day will be tempted to believe that God is not with them and fail as distractions test them. But, as “WOKE” Catholics, we can turn back to God every day by remaining steadfast and firm in our faith that, imperfect as each of us is—just like the Hebrew people in the Desert of Sin—God is with us. That’s when the devil departs from “WOKE” Catholic. But, as today’s gospel reminds us, only “…for a time” because distractions abound.
That represents our challenge from scripture for this first week of Lent: Not to live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.
To this end, at the start of each day conduct a memento mori by recalling “Emmanuel”—“God is with us.” Then—and before doing everything throughout each day of the week—even the day’s most menial tasks—say “Emmanuel.” Then, for example:
- perform your morning ablutions and get dressed in the awareness that God is with you;
- (if needed) replace the Kleenex, paper towels, and toilet paper with the awareness that God is with you;
- (for guys) put down the toilet seat with the awareness that God is with you;
- (for gals) put away all of your stuff that’s on the bathroom countertop with the awareness that God is with you;
- make the bed and tidy up the bedroom with the awareness that God is with you;
- head out to school or work with the awareness that God is with you;
- perform household chores with the awareness that God is with you;
- vacuum the floor, do the laundry, iron the shirts with the awareness that God is with you;
- prepare meals with the awareness that God is with you;
- set and clear the table with the awareness that God is with you;
- complete the homework with the awareness that God is with you;
- talk with others with the awareness that God is with you; and,
- turn out the lights and falling asleep with the awareness that God is with you.
The first step in turning one’s back on God is to give up on this practice which his breaks the spiritual circuit connecting us with God. In effect, we turn off the lights and dupes ourselves into believing in our self-sufficiency—freely choosing to live like “sleepy” Catholics in darkness.
By returning to God throughout each day of this first week of Lent by realizing “God is with us,” next Sunday—the second Sunday of Lent—will be the day to “bring the first fruits of your labors which the LORD has given you, set them before the LORD, your God, and bow down in His presence.” Then, to “lift up your hearts” because “it is right and just to give thanks to the Lord our God.”
This practice—the practice of the presence of God—will provide a good start in making the season of Lent a time of blessing and time of sanctification for all of us…as “WOKE” Catholics.
As St. Paul reminded the Romans, so he reminds us on this first Sunday of Lent:
The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart—that is, the word of faith that we preach….For “everyone who calls on the name of [Emmanuel] will be saved.”
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