Dearly Beloved,
Praise and thanksgiving to Almighty and Eternal God for bringing us into the Lenten Season 2014. In this year of grace, the Penitential Season begins with Ash Wednesday on the first Wednesday of March. Easter Sunday this year is April 20.
Recently, at a priest retreat, a guest Bishop shared a helpful insight. He said that: "We are God's construction site." For instance, the San Francisco bridge is so long, that something is always being done to it. Constantly, it is either being re-painted, refurbished, and renovated. And it is has to be measured and tested seismically to ensure it could withstand natural calamities. Like the bridge, "We are God's construction site."
It would be unrealistic to call to mind a Canonized Saint, at the last stage of their life. Because at that point, they have been so polished that the face of Christ shines so clearly and visibly in them. Yet, a closer look into their past history, they too are God's construction site. And that is the hope for the rest of us on the faith journey, to be refined into the image and likeness of Christ.
Anacortes houses two oil refineries, and through the process of infraction, crude oil can be refined so as to benefit mankind's usage. With the visible smoke stack, one takes into consideration how much the crude has to undergo refinement to make the process possible.
It is similar to the refinement and the purging that the soul undergoes. So that even through trials, the soul recognizes the process of refinement, being purged of pride so that the need for Almighty God becomes inherent. Isn't that the case in which one fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday or abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent? Or even make a small sacrifice of giving something up during the forth days of penance? So that one's soul can boldly say: I'm starving for Almighty God.
"Man does not live on bread alone but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."
The mature soul begins to recognize that it belongs to Almighty God. Like Christ's Baptism at the Jordan River, and hearing the words from the Heavenly Father: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and through Baptism, the soul has been consecrated to Heavenly Father in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
Belonging to God means to be grateful to God. But yet it is so difficult to be grateful to God in times of trials. Only when the soul is so fully aware that it belongs to God, that it can see trials as a time of purging, or like crude oil being refined, undergoing the immense heat so as to be of spiritual benefit for mankind, being salt of the earth and light for the world.
It is only then that the soul can boldly see a perceived bad thing as a good thing because like Jeremiah, God is molding the clay. It certainly is a painful process, as gold in the furnace, but the outcome is undoubtedly a good one.
Lent is a time to be in the desert with Christ for forty days. It is a time to participate more fully in spiritual activities at Church such as weekend and weekly Eucharistic ritual, Confessions, personal accountability within Spiritual Direction, carrying our cross with Christ on Fridays for Stations of the Cross, quality time spent in Perpetual Adoration, devotion to Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet. Yes it's a lot of work, but the soul needs to go through intense refinement and purging. Blessings to you during the penitential season of Holy Lent.
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