In last Tuesday’s column I asked over how easily we reverted from a people who openly professed the spiritually edifying messages of love, mercy and compassion of Pope Francis into one of recrimination, hatred, and revenge in the wake of the Mamasapano tragedy. Admittedly, as I’ve said, there are psychological and sociological explanations for this. But one cannot but decry how we quickly descended into vitriol when all the while we thought that the pope and his good tidings left a deep mark on us. Well, as cynics are wont to say – business as usual.
I must have been overly optimistic, albeit unwarranted, that the pontifical visitation would have spurred us and our leaders to at least try to strive to put into practice his exhortations. Surely, I must have been carried away too much by the experience to expect that conversion can be instantaneous. Well, except perhaps in the case of Saul, the erstwhile persecutor of Christians, who while on the road to Tarsus was converted by the special grace of God to become one of the greatest apostles, spiritual and moral transformation of a society is a prolonged process, slowly distilled by the people’s experiences and purified by collective history. Much like the Israelites who wandered around the desert to endure heat, death, hunger and exhaustion before God finally allowed them to enter the Promised Land, we as a people will have to undergo the same trials and tribulations before we undergo moral transformation. Yet again, like the generation of Israelites who escaped Egypt but never reached the Promise Land because of their stubbornness and donkey-like obstinacy, this generation, with its dogged refusal to heed God’s call to moral conversion will also not see the dawn of an honest, peaceful and orderly society.
But God gives his beloved every opportunity for conversion because he is a God of infinite love and inexhaustible mercy. He never tires giving his people a second, third and so on and so forth chances—ad infinitum. In celebrating Ash Wednesday a few days ago, we entered into this penitential season of Lent where we are once again reminded, through the prophet Joel, “to rend your hearts and not your garments”. In this time, God is once again reminding us to make new men out of us with a complete change of heart. As Pope Francis also pointed out two weeks ago: “The mercy of God overcomes every obstacle and the hand of Jesus touches the leper. He does not arise from a safe distance and does not act by proxy, but exposes Himself directly to the infection of our evil; and so our own evil becomes the place of contact. He, Jesus, takes from us our sick humanity and we take from Him his healthy and healing humanity. This happens every time we receive a Sacrament of faith: the Lord Jesus “touches” us and gives us His grace.”
Lent is a gentle reminder not to be overly concerned about our selfish lives and its gratification but to focus on what is essential, that is, on our relationship with God and neighbor, and ultimately salvation. The practice of blessing ashes made from palm branches and placing them on the heads of the faithful is not an empty ritual. It is a strong reminder of our mortality and that we come from dust, and to dust we shall return. Mindful that man’s life is transient and passing, we should strive to gather treasures in heaven and not wealth that decay and can be eaten by moths and worms.
As we seek to find answers to the multitudinous problems that we face as a people, including corruption, violence, poverty, injustice and all forms of suffering in general, it is good to be reminded that things can change for the better if we heed the call to conversion. Pope Francis also gives us the prescription on how to combat these difficulties that we face in his Lenten message for 2015:
“As individuals too, we have are tempted by indifference. Flooded with news reports and troubling images of human suffering, we often feel our complete inability to help. What can we do to avoid being caught up in this spiral of distress and powerlessness?
First, we can pray in communion with the Church on earth and in heaven. Let us not underestimate the power of so many voices united in prayer! The 24 Hours for the Lord initiative, which I hope will be observed on 13-14 March throughout the Church, also at the diocesan level, is meant to be a sign of this need for prayer.
Second, we can help by acts of charity, reaching out to both those near and far through the Church’s many charitable organizations. Lent is a favorable time for showing this concern for others by small yet concrete signs of our belonging to the one human family.
Third, the suffering of others is a call to conversion, since their need reminds us of the uncertainty of our own lives, and our dependence on God and our brothers and sisters. If we humbly implore God’s grace and accept our own limitations, we will trust in the infinite possibilities which God’s love holds out to us. We will also be able to resist the diabolical temptation of thinking that by our own efforts we can save the world and ourselves.
As a way of overcoming indifference and our pretensions to self-sufficiency, I would invite everyone to live this Lent as an opportunity for engaging in what Benedict XVI called a formation of the heart (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 31). A merciful heart does not mean a weak heart. Anyone who wishes to be merciful must have a strong and steadfast heart, closed to the tempter but open to God. A heart which lets itself be pierced by the Spirit so as to bring love along the roads that lead to our brothers and sisters. And, ultimately, a poor heart, one which realizes its own poverty and gives itself freely for others.
During this Lent, then, brothers and sisters, let us all ask the Lord: “‘Fac cor nostrum secundum cor tuum’: Make our hearts like yours (Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In this way we will receive a heart which is firm and merciful, attentive and generous, a heart which is not closed, indifferent or prey to the globalization of indifference.”
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