The app is a splendid way to navigate, especially in the greater Tampa Bay area. Waze not only gives directions, but a “voice” routes you around obstacles like traffic jams.
It’s a powerful spiritual metaphor. Thomas Merton, a spiritual guide for some Catholics, began a prayer with, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I'm going.” Many people today seem spiritually lost, disoriented or off-track. But we have a “voice” to guide us. The “voice” is our conscience, informed by the bible, the authoritative teachings of Catholic Christianity and the wise counsel of holy women and men.
When I get off track on the road, Waze calmly recalculates and determines the best way to get to my goal. No matter where I drive, Waze can set me in the right direction. And just as I have learned to trust the GPS electronic voice to get around traffic, so I have to learn to trust the voice in my conscience, informed by the bible, the guidance of the Church and the counsel of the saints as I navigate through the challenges of life to my ultimate goal: eternal life with God.
Today’s word of God carries us back over three thousand years, to a defining moment in the life of the Hebrews: their Exodus or liberation from their oppressors in ancient Egypt. Here Moses experiences the awesome presence of God in the image of “fire flaming out of a bush.”
God reveals himself as the creator of this universe: “I am the one who causes to be everything that is,” as one biblical author translated this mysterious phrase. And then God empowers the reluctant Moses to free the Hebrews from their oppressors.
God also calls you and me, by virtue of the life-giving waters of baptism, to live a godlike life worthy of our calling as adopted sons and daughters of God our Father, to try always to do the right thing even when we, like Moses, may be reluctant to do so.
Paul, in his letter to the Christian community in Corinth, compares the Hebrew Exodus experience to our baptismal experience; just as God was a rock in the wilderness, out of which flowed life-giving waters, so too Christ is our rock, from whom comes our salvation, eternal life.
But then Paul warns us: just as the Hebrews fell from grace, so too we can fall from grace if we’re not vigilant; it takes hard work to be a faithful disciple.
In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus deals with the question of evil: why do bad things happen to good people? There is of course no satisfactory answer. Why mindless killings in New Zealand, why so many people suffering violence around our world? Evil is ultimately a mystery.
And then Jesus speaks about a barren tree. The point of the parable is this: yes, God is patient, but God will hold us accountable for our lives, our attitudes, and our behaviors. And so Jesus urges us to repent now, to turn to a God-centered/other-centered life. Yes, live in light of your ultimate purpose, life in relationship with God here and beyond. And so always be vigilant. For the end, our death, could come unexpectedly.
Lent is a time to ask ourselves again, what are we living for? What's our purpose in life? And how integrate these questions better into the here and now.
Often, people live in the future, not in the present. Some imagine, My life will begin when I get a new job, when I get my degree, when I rebuild my home, when my son or daughter gets well. Life will begin in the future?
Naomi Levy, in her book Hope Will Find You, wrote that while caring for her critically ill daughter, she wondered when could she realize the dreams and goals she had for herself. She wrote: “I could see the ways I had been promising myself there was a future waiting for me. And just then something snapped inside my soul: This is my future: the present, the here and now. I’d been walking around thinking, this isn’t my life; my life is coming; it’s just around the bend.”
She thought of all the people she knew who were chanting that same line. She realized, “We were all caught in the same lie. We were fooling ourselves into thinking our lives hadn’t begun. But all of us have to learn to live inside the imperfect lives we have here and now.”
Today, Jesus urges us to repent, to live our everyday lives to the fullest, to live each day as though it’s our last. This Lenten season is a time for finding our way out of our winters of negativity, our deserts of self-absorption, our wildernesses of disappointments, images that weave in and out of Lent.
These days before Easter are a time for deciding what we believe to be truly important, and then acting on these priorities now. For the only thing we can count on is today. We can’t change yesterday, and we don’t know about tomorrow.
Our Christian faith proclaims that life has meaning, that there is indeed an all-good, compassionate, and merciful God who seeks us out in our everyday experiences. This God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth; and Jesus renewed God’s covenant with us through his death/resurrection and thereby opened up to us life beyond this earthly life. This same God is alive among us today by the power of the Spirit, especially in the sacramental life of our Catholic community.
This is the mystery of the triune God, a God who is one yet diverse, stable yet dynamic, transcendent yet immanent! And we can participate in God’s triune life not only here and now but hereafter: by living a life of regular prayer, by fasting from attitudes and behaviors that jeopardize our relationship with God and with one another, and by living a life of generous service to others.
That is our Lenten message. I think this quote sums it up:
I shall pass through this world but once:
any good therefore that I can do
or any kindness that I can show to any human being,
let me do it now, let me not defer or neglect it
for I shall not pass this way again.
Yes, try not to live a life of regrets; a life of should haves or shouldn't haves. Just do any good you can NOW.
