On the day after Ash Wednesday, a certain 97-year-old of my close acquaintance emerged hale and hearty from her latest adventure.
I guess “angioplasty” qualifies as an adventure. (Heck, when you’re 97, even getting out of bed in the morning can be quite an adventure!)
And as we waited with the patient in her post-op recovery, I was struck by the radiographic image we’d just seen – how much it called to mind a river, straining to find its way through a dry and desert land.
This Grand Dame didn’t have to trek alone, of course. Angels (and “human angels”) attended her every move in the desert that day – and she would have expected no less. A woman of tremendous faith, she’s come to count on the Lord to see her through life’s deserts, lifting her up – even as Moses once said – “with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders,” (not the least of which is technology that allows Docs to see blood flowing through one’s veins in real time!)
All of which got me thinking how we are blessed by the season of Lent, how we are blessed by our 40+ days of “desert time” with each additional trip we make around the sun. That wasn’t always my take on this holy season. There was a time in my life when I dreaded Lent – certain of my sinfulness, convinced that my resolutions were doomed to failure.
So what changed? On some level, I think, I discovered that for most of my life I’d been listening more to the devil than to Jesus during my annual Lenten journeys. “I shall give you all this power,” the devil says to Jesus in this week’s gospel passage. And he said pretty much the same thing to me: giving me the notion that I was in control of holiness, that I could beat-back sinfulness on my own.
I bought the lie, and so I “failed” at Lent…again and again and again.
“Filled with the Holy Spirit,” I’ve since learned that there’s a different path through the desert available to me – to all of us. Jesus blazed the trail, and by so doing he performed something like an angioplasty on our calcified veins.
It’s an astonishing gift. Seems almost too good to be true. But it is true, as St. Paul assures us this week at the beginning of our Lenten journey: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
And there’s also this promise: “No one who believes in Him will be put to shame.” Right, Mom?
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 