Exiit qui seminat

Part of my routine on my day off is watching Bishop Robert Barron's Sunday Sermon on YouTube with my mom and dad. My parents truly enjoying listening to his homilies and I like to see if the bishop and I focus on the same aspect of the Scriptures in our preaching, plus I always learn a thing or two. Recalling Mark's Gospel from last Sunday (Mark 1:40-45), Bishop Barron stated, "Sometimes, we, in our sin, feel exactly like the leper in Jesus' time ... The very saddest things I'll hear, when someone says: 'Father, look, I'm not even going to bother going to confession. The things I've done, there's no way the Lord will forgive me. I'm too far gone. I'm too far under. I'm too far away.'" For many, Bishop Barron concludes, their sinfulness turns us into spiritual lepers and drives us away from our community of faith and away from God. It's for that very reason, and so much more, that the Church and all of her members enter into this season of Lent. Lent is for sinners. Lent is for us. Our Lord enters into the world and enters fully into His plan of salvation for the simple reality that we are sinners. I don't write this in order to beat us up with the proverbial spiritual 2x4, but to remind us that sometimes we believe that our sins are too big for God to forgive us. We sometimes believe that, even with His grace, we don't have enough to be able to change our lives for the better. Lent reminds us that we are radically dependent on God for His mercy, a mercy that He is more than ready to give us. At the same time, the Lord invites us into a relationship with Him. Relationships are never one sided. They are a dynamic interaction between two people. Having a relationship with our Heavenly Father is having a dialogue between Him and us. He speaks and we (hopefully) listen. We speak and not only does God listen, He acts. Lent is our engaging in prayer, fasting and alms giving so we can have the self-restraint to turn away from sin and the wisdom to believe in the Gospel. As we continue our Lenten journey, may the rest of our 40 days be a time of great spiritual fruit and radical love, a time of receiving the Lord's mercy and being an instrument of that mercy to others.