Saturday of the First Week of Lent

 Lectionary: 229

"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies,
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

Simone Weil, an intense young teacher, writer, and philosopher, was once known by her fellow philosophical students in the academy as "Mademoiselle Categorical Imperative."

The expression, Categorical Imperative, was coined by Emmanuel Kant. He had proposed that, if something is the right thing to do then it absolutely must be done. And if it's wrong, it must never occur. If a piece of scrap paper should be picked up off the street, it's a sin not to. 

Mlle Weil lived her last days in England during World War II but she knew that millions of people in France and Germany were suffering starvation, and so she died of malnutrition after months of fasting in sympathy with the hungry, despite the urging of the English family that had taken her in. 

She also delayed Baptism and entrance into the Catholic Church because she had issues with some of the Church's policies and much of the Church's history, although she believed that the Blessed Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Christ, attended Mass, and worshiped often in a Catholic Church. 

Lent offers us the opportunity to recognize our sins, including the systemic sins of the world we have created and to which we contribute continually. It will also remind us of how helpless we are in our sins, because forty days is a long time to keep most of our resolutions intact. 

Like Mlle Categorical Imperative, we're appalled by stories of sin in the Church and among our ancestors; but our descendants will probably look aghast at things we take for granted. How can a society breed its children in test tubes and implant them in unknown women, as if the human child is a commodity or a pet? How can a society abort children and spend billions on custom-designed pets?  How can they smoke carcinogenic tobacco and drive fossil fuel vehicles? What were they thinking? 

We'll have no answer for them, as we helplessly observe their misdoings from eternity. But the grace of God will speak to them as it does to us, because our. 

"... heavenly Father makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust."