There was a story told about a mother camel and a baby camel. One day, the baby camel asked her mother: why do we have these large and ugly three-toed feet. The mother camel replied: honey, it is so that we would not sink when making long trips in the desert sands.
The baby camel asks: Mother, so why do we have long eyelashes? The mother camel responds: honey, so that it prevents the desert sands from getting into our eyes.
The baby camel continued with her questions: mother, why do we have these large humps on our backs while others do not? The mother camel responds: so that we may store up water when making long trips through the desert.
The baby camel summarized to her mother: We have this types of feet to keep us from sinking into the sand, long eyelashes to keep sand out of our eyes, and large humps to store water when traveling through the desert. But Mother, but then why are we here in the Toronto Zoo?
After the Baptism, Christ enters into the desert for forty days. The Lenten Journey is about a desert experience with Jesus Christ. It is leaving a familiar environment, so that we could experience our true identity and our selves in the desert.
It is not just to know it theoretically, as the mother camel explains it to the baby camel. But it is a deep experience of our true identity, namely we belong to Almighty God in Christ Jesus through the Sacrament of Baptism.
The desert experience with Christ helps us to know that we belong to Almighty God. The desert experience tests our spiritual feet that keeps us from sinking into the sand when going through trials. The desert experience is also about rediscovering the eyelashes of faith, and recognizing that we can often be desensitize to certain things, and not allowing those kinds of things to prevent us from seeing the truth that we belong to God. And finally, the desert experience enables us to endure long trips without being enslaved to the senses. Through fasting and abstinence, the soul can come to recognize that it is ultimately hungry for Almighty God. On this weekend, alliance of two hearts, let us be reminded that We belong to Christ and the Blessed Mother. Christ is the bridegroom, wedded to our soul, re-presented in the Eucharistic Ritual.
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