THE
SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT
We read in Sacred Scripture how God commanded
Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him as a holocaust offering to
demonstrate his obedience to God. An angel then interceded to prevent any harm
coming to Isaac. There is a definite parallel between this event and our own
salvation story. God, because of his love for us, offered up his only begotten
son as a sacrificial offering to us to demonstrate his love for us. Nobody
prevented him from doing this. Nobody interceded before this event occurred.
Jesus obeyed his father, picked up his cross, and journeyed through his Passion
to his crucifixion.
We are urged to meditate on this decision
continuously and explore how it is the foundation of our entire relationship
with God. It is where the relationship should begin. As we struggle to
understand God and allow him into our lives this sacrifice needs to be our
entire focus. It should be a reflection of our obedience and love. By its example
we can work to become closer to God. It is not only a story but an event that
occurred to demonstrate the perfect relationship we can have with our creator.
The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is what Lent is
all about. We are given the opportunity to offer our own sacrifice to Jesus and
enter into a spiritual experience. We are encouraged to feel what he felt and
understand the love that he has for us more fully. We can then find the
weaknesses in the relationship that we created through our sinful nature. These
weaknesses can be repaired through hard work and adjustments. Knowing that
Jesus is walking with us through our personal Passion can give us the added
strength that we need as we come face to face with our faults and
short-comings. Our lives can be utterly transformed in these short forty days
of intense reflection and contemplation.
God gave everything to us from life to the entire
universe. He then gave us more by letting us decide for ourselves whether to
love him or reject him. And when this wasn’t enough he offered to us his only
son. Yet we still doubt him. We still reject him; denying him the opportunity
to love us. We spurn his advances and his pleas and choose to distort
everything to fit our own desires and pursuits. We actually question his authenticity
and commitment to us; choosing when and where we will embrace him if at all.
Yet he remains our greatest advocate. He is indeed
with us always. He who gave us everything including the life of his son. It
becomes plainly obvious that through this decision that he surely would not
deny us anything. Once we allow this to define our faith we can truly
experience a deeper understanding of what this relationship with God actually
means to us.
Deacon Tom
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