Sermon Cloud

In his Lenten message to Catholics of the diocese, Bishop Plouffe reflects this year on an interesting proposition. Many of us have perhaps traditionally looked at this forty-day period as a time to focus on ourselves, on our own deprivations, and on how we can grow. Instead, the bishop looks at this period as a time when God himself is the prime mover - the initiator in the process of calling us back to himself.

He says that God, who is Love itself is the one who pursues us, 'softening our hearts so that we can be open to the realities of the Spirit and so that we can experience a secret hunger and thirst for God'. Softening our hardened hearts is precisely the work of the Lenten season, and recognizing this work is perhaps the result of the discipline we practice in this time.

All human beings need to pay attention to the realities of the Spirit, and in order to do this, we need first to set aside our own preoccupations and find some time to listen. The temptation is always to fill up our time with other activities, and usually we get to the end of a day, a week, and even the entire Lenten season before we realize that we have not made too much time to connect with ourselves, with God or with others.

The scriptures this week place us with Jesus in the desert, and faced with the temptations to turn our focus away from the goal of our exercise. Jesus too was tempted to shy away from the invitation to connect with His Father. The devil offered him bread to slake his hunger (Lk 4:3), vast riches (Lk 4:5-7) and even the possibility to call upon the help of the angels to alleviate his suffering (Lk 4:9-11) but Jesus chose to forsake these temptations in favor of allowing the Father to mould his heart and draw him into a deeper relationship with Him.

Lent is therefore a time for us to grow in trust. We place ourselves in the hands of the Father and allow him to do the work of bringing us back to him. Throughout this period, we trust in His Word, which is 'near us, on our lips and in our hearts' (Rom 10:8) for we know that 'no one who trusts in him will be put to shame' ( Rom 10:11).

At the beginning of this Lenten season, let us simply 'set ourselves before the Lord' ( Deut 26:10) and allow him to soften our hearts, hardened by bitterness, jealousy, envy and pride. He alone can probe our hearts, and show us the truths which are revealed by the Spirit as it works within us. He alone can mould us through the discipline of Lent so that we hunger and thirst for a deepening of our knowledge and appreciation for His presence in our lives.