Friday of the Third Week of Lent

Lectionary: 242

Return, O Israel, to the LORD, your God;
you have collapsed through your guilt.
Take with you words,
and return to the LORD;
Say to him, "Forgive all iniquity,
and receive what is good, that we may render
as offerings the bullocks from our stalls.

As we travel with Jesus to Jerusalem and Calvary, he does penance with us. Like King David, his ancestor and author of Psalm 51, Jesus practices the virtue. He takes upon himself our guilt and shame and leads us in that "Way" which Saint Paul first persecuted and then preached. 

It is a practice of grief and relief, sorrow and joy, and regret and gratitude for the sins of our past and the grace of our life in Christ. It is an embrace of that foolish waywardness we share with humankind. The Lord walks the distance with us for "He is not ashamed to call us his sisters and brothers as we do penance with him. 

A highly individualistic society teaches its children to isolate themselves from one another. I am sometimes called to celebrate a mass for small children and I watch them scrunch into the pews, sitting shoulder to shoulder. When one squirms they all squirm. They like and need to feel their bodies all bunched together. 

But at some point our children become ashamed of their bodies and start to isolate and distance themselves. I watch the friars -- adult American men -- assemble in chapel for Morning Prayer. No two to a pew; if there's only two in the chapel, we're on opposite sides. No unseemly relationships here! 

But we remember how Jesus waded into, and disappeared in, a crowd. He was baptized by John the Baptist, as Saint Mark tells the story, apparently without anyone's noticing his presence. When an angry mob moved to hurl him over a cliff, he faded into the crowd and walked away. Saint John says he went up to Jerusalem and heard them asking one another, "Do you think he'll come?" He felt no compulsive need to stand out or stand apart, but he quietly goes with us as we practice penance. 

Penance teaches us that no one is saved alone. Those who isolate themselves from the Church, thinking they don't need our companionship, wander into the wilderness and are lost. I think of it like the Hebrews as they escaped Egypt. Some might have said, "I know where this is going!" and moved ahead of Moses toward Palestine. Others wanted to go back to the old, assured way of bondage in Egypt. They missed their fleshpots.

Both groups were lost because they separated themselves from God's chosen people. There is no better Way to live because we do it as one people, as God's holy people.

We need one another; and Christians in particular need their fellow Christians. It does matter if you go to Church; you've not found a better way. There is no better way than the Way of the Lord. 

And so we embrace one another, bear with one another, (Colossians 3:13 & Ephesians 4:2), carry one  another, and pray for one another.  

And yet I do write a new commandment to you, which holds true in him and among you, for the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

Whoever says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is still in the darkness.

Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is nothing in him to cause a fall.

Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

I am writing to you, children, because your sins have been forgiven for his name’s sake. (1 John 2:8-12)