Yesterday morning I attended Ash Wednesday Mass at my parish. In his homily, Fr. Dale Korogi called the day a rallying cry to be our best Christian selves.
The season of Lent, Fr. Dale said, “announces that the current state of affairs, the status quo, that business as usual, is not good enough: we are created for, and capable of, so much more.”
We are capable of so much more. We know that. We know that, like Paul, it is sometimes (often?) the case that “I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” We have sinned. We have failed.
Fortunately, Lent, as Fr. Dale suggested (paraphrasing Sister Joan Chittister), offers us “the opportunity to begin again yet again: to be what we could be, but are not; to do what we should be doing, and do not; to change what we ought to change, but have not; to turn things around, to go beyond being halfhearted, only halfway turned to the Lord, and live more deliberately the way of Jesus Christ.”
Let us answer the rallying cry. Let us let this Lent (in the words of Chittister) be “about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now….a summons to live anew.”
Creo en Dios! 