Friday of the Third Week of Lent

Return, O Israel, to the LORD, your God;

you have collapsed through your guilt.

Take with you words,

and return to the LORD;

In the VA hospital I often anoint Veterans with the Sacrament of the Sick; and, more often than not, I recite the words of Jesus:

Come to me all you who labor and are weary and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. And your souls will find refuge, for my yoke is easy and my burden light. 

I hear that sentiment in today's first reading from the Prophet Hosea. It is not unlike the Lord's words to Saint Paul, "It is hard for you to kick against the goad."

If obedience to the Lord is difficult, the disciple soon discovers every other way of life is far more difficult. 

My Dad, watching me undertake a project, often asked, "Why do you do it the hard way?" He was a clever man with far more experience at whatever I was trying. Occasionally I listened to his advice. 

"You have collapsed through your guilt." the Lord says to his people, as he offers a word of comfort. Shame and guilt are often the first responses to an uncomfortable truth; we hide behind these familiar shields and blame the one who speaks the truth for being insensitive, lacking compassion, or -- worse -- judgmental. 

But that response only compounds the problem. In the end we have to drop the ego-stuff and admit, "I have sinned." 

The Spanish Franciscan John de Bonilla urged his readers in the fifteenth chapter of his tract, Pax Anima:

Chapter XV

How the soul must quiet herself at every turn without losing time or profit.

Take, then, this rule and method in all the falls you shall make, be they great or little; yea, though ten thousand times in the same day you shall have incurred the same crime, and that not occasionally, [ed. "accidentally"] but voluntarily and deliberately; observe, I say, inviolably this prescription: That as soon as ever you find yourself in fault, you trouble not nor disquiet yourself, but instantly, as soon as you are aware what you have done, with humility and confidence, beholding your own frailty, cast an amorous glance on God, and fixing there your love, say with heart and mouth,

"Lord, I have done that which is like what I am, nor can anything else be expected at my hands but these and the like transgressions; nor had I stopped here, but plunged myself further into all wickedness, if thy goodness had permitted it, and left me wholly to myself. I give thee infinite thanks that thou didst not thus leave me, and for what I have done I am sorry. Pardon me for thy own sake, and for what thou art, and give me grace to offend thee no more, but admit me again to the favor of thy friendship."

Having done this, lose neither time nor quiet of mind, imagining that perhaps God hath not pardoned you, and the like, but with full repose proceed with your exercise as though you had committed no fault; and this, as I have said, not once, but a hundred times, and, if there were need, every moment, with as much confidence and tranquility the last time as the first. For, beside the particular service of God herein, a thousand other advantages are gained by it; time is not lost in futile excuses, further progress is not obstructed, but, on the contrary, sin is subdued and mastered with much profit and perfection. This I would gladly inculcate upon, and persuade scrupulous and disquieted souls of; then they would soon see how different a state of tranquility they would find themselves in, and pity the blindness of those who, so much to their cost, go on still losing so much precious time. Note this well, for it is the key to all true spiritual progress, and the shortest means to attain to it.

"Keep it simple!" member of Alcoholics Anonymous often say to one another. What could be more simple than, "I have done that which is like what I am....?"