67. Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Meditations no. 113 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Lent reminds us that our life must be transformed in Christ.

Moses spoke to the people and said, See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. Obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you this day, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his statutes and his ordinances … Therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days.

The Church invites us, throughout these forty days, to consider the treasures of love and life which God our Lord offers us so generously. But, at the same time, she reminds us that God expects our free response. For that reason, Lent should suggest to us these basic questions: Am I advancing in my faithfulness to Christ, in my desire for holiness, in a generous apostolate in my daily life, in my ordinary work among my colleagues?

Each one of us, silently, should answer these questions, and we will see that we need to change again if Christ is to live in us, if Jesus’ image is to be reflected clearly in our behaviour. If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Christ is saying this again to us, whispering it in our ears: the cross each day. As St Jerome puts it: “Not only in time of persecution or when we have the chance of martyrdom, but in all circumstances, in everything we do and think, in everything we say, let us deny what we used to be and let us confess what we now are, reborn as we have been in Christ.”

It’s an echo of St Paul’s words: Once you were all darkness. Now, in the Lord, you are all daylight. You must live as children of the light. Where light has its effect, men walk in all goodness, holiness and truth, seeking those things which please God.

Conversion is the task of a moment; sanctification is the work of a lifetime. The divine seed of charity, which God has sown in our souls, wants to grow, to express itself in action, to yield results which continually coincide with what God wants. Therefore, we must be ready to begin again, to find again - in new situations - the light and the stimulus of our first conversion. And that is why we must prepare with a deep examination of conscience, asking our Lord for his help, so that we’ll know him and ourselves better. If we want to be converted again, there’s no other way.

To be transformed into Christ, we must know and love him.

The Son of Man, Jesus told his disciples, must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. The Gospel writer adds that the disciples did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it.

At first glance, this passage in the Gospel is somewhat disconcerting. The Apostles had been with Jesus for some time, but still did not understand his words, even though they were clear and transparent. This was because, even though they loved Jesus, their love was still imperfect: they had not arrived at the point of full identification which comes from true love, and which makes the knowledge of the beloved so real and deep that there is no longer any need for words.

The love we give our Lord should make us prompt to understand the stirrings he causes in our soul. We should not let these things be “foreign to us”, as Christ’s words were foreign to his Apostles. So let us always seek to hold a divine dialogue that makes us one with Jesus Christ, and makes known to us the yearnings of his Heart.

When you love someone a lot, you want to know things about them. We meditate on the life of our Lord, from his Birth in a manger to his Death on the Cross, and then his Resurrection. And we hold our Lord’s life in our memory as if it were a film. So, without needing a book, just by closing our eyes at any moment, we can contemplate him, and live with him and with our Blessed Lady, who is his Mother and ours, and with the holy women, and the Apostles. We conjure up his image, not as if we were watching a film, but as if we ourselves were actually part of that film, by virtue of our love.

To set out and follow Jesus, who made his way resolutely to Calvary, we must meditate on all that our Lord has done for us, and fill ourselves with a yearning to respond, to follow him without hesitation or indecision; in short, we should resolve to repay love with love, to give our life for Jesus Christ, qui de coelo descendit pondere caritatis, who was brought down from heaven by the weight of his Love.

True love leads to joyous sacrifice.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Saint Paul tells us quite clearly that love is what counts; hence we are eager to talk and listen to our Lord, so as to get to know him better each day, by reading and meditating on the Gospel, by praying, and by receiving the Eucharist.

In the words of St Leo the Great, the faithful ought to examine themselves, and strive to discern what are their innermost affections. If they should discover in their heart the fruits of charity, let them be certain that God dwells within them, and let them take care to become more and more worthy of so great a guest, by persevering generously in the works of mercy. For if God is love, no limit should be put to charity, seeing that no limit can be placed on the Divinity.

But our relationship with Christ is not to be restricted to merely confiding to him our wish to love, for we must not confuse love with sweet feelings. Love without renunciation is false and deceitful; it is merely selfishness or empty sentimentality. St Paul brings this to our mind when, in his ode to charity, he says: Love is patient … it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And our Father adds, love is sacrifice; and sacrifice for Love is joy.

Does our love possess these qualities? Do we gladly bear small difficulties for love of Jesus Christ? In times of weariness or suffering, do we trust our Lord? Do we endure our small but real sufferings in good spirit? If not, we have yet to fall in love with Christ. We need to speak more with him and prove our good dispositions through small acts of love. Our Father insists that in the most varied activities of our day, in all situations, we must act as servants of God, realizing that he is with us, that we are his children. We must be aware of the divine roots burrowing into our life and act accordingly.

Mother of Fair Love, we entreat you to teach us to love your Son with complete self-sacrifice and self-denial.