Lent: A Time for Blessing

This past Sunday we celebrated the Beatitudes in the proclamation of the gospel at Mass. The beatitude or the holiness of God among us begins with the repeated phrase “blessed are...”. In these listings of the blessings, the disciple is invited to discover the Kingdom of God.

Jesus, in Matthew’s gospe,l is the new Moses. Seated as a teacher of the law among his disciples, he shares a new law. He teaches his students about a new way of life, a new relationship with his Father. The relationships among us are the discovery point of the Kingdom of God among us.

Recall the new way of experiencing life as disciples of Christ:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: the reign of God is their’s.

Blessed are the sorrowing: they shall be consoled.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for holiness: they shall have their fill.

Blessed are the merciful: mercy shall be their’s.

Blessed are the single-hearted: they shall see God.

Blessed are those persecuted for holiness’ sake: the reign of God is theirs.

Blessed are those insulted, persecuted, and slandered because of Christ: be glad and rejoice, for your reward in heaven is great.

Lenten Persuit of Holiness

Lent invites us to search out the holiness of God in our life. The Beatitudes provide a good starting point to begin the search for God in our life. Better yet, they provide the place for God to search us out and make himself known to us.

Lent, in this sense, is a time of blessing. In the judeo-christian tradition, blessing God is to publically proclaim the presence of God among us. To bless is to thank and praise God for his mercy expressed in our lives. It is prayer and reminder of God with us.

In blessing God, we lift up ourselves and our lives before him. The words are reminders of God’s actions and our needed response to embrace those actions as disciples.

Prayer is to remember as Lent is a time to remember. During Lent we publically at worship and in our lived life of discipleship bless God. In that remembrance the actions of the Father in Christ are renewed for us. We become that which we proclaim.

Lent is about being people of the Kingdom. In being poor in spirit, the reign of God is actualized in our world. In the sorrowing, we receive consolation. In hungering and thirsting for righteousness, we are sated in our longing for God with us. In living with a focused heart we in reality come to know God. In our longing for peace we more and more become the children of God.

Lenten Conversion

Lent is an invitation to conversion, which is to walk in a new direction. It is a call to see things in a new way. Lenten holiness, in this sense, is to perceive life and people in a different way. Our vision and our relationship is changed.

Our more recent traditions in Lent have been to focus on our sinfulness. Conversion has centered on our turning from sin and changing our lives. In the longer tradition of Church life, Lent has been a time of baptismal renewal: who we are in Christ. In Christ we re-experience our relationship with our brothers and sisters and with our world.

The Beatitudes provide a great starting point for our Lenten journey. The invitation is to once again sit at the feet of Christ, the new Moses and teacher. It’s the chance to relearn what it is to be a faithful disciple. We are called to the first part of each beatitude: to be poor in spirit, to embrace the tears and sadness of life, to hunger for holiness, to be single hearted. We are to be peacemakers.

Lent is to know the mystery of God in Christ. It is to re-experience the Kingdom of God. To search out God in the first part of the beatitude is at the same moment to know the second. We are embraced in the reign of God, we are consoled, we see God, we come to be children of God. This journey seems to be a worthy task for Lent.

Lent calls us to welcome the blessings of God in Christ into our lives. It is to be embraced by the mystery of the Kingdom. Lent is a good time to set time aside to pray, to bless God, to pursue the ways of discipleship.

CDH