Our holiness is a perfect gift from God, poured into our lives through our Baptism, but our response to it is often less than perfect. As a result, Christ has given the Church the season of Lent and the sacrament of Reconciliation as opportunities to open ourselves more fully to this marvelous gift, that he might transform us more completely in him. During Lent, we forsake those things that the Holy Spirit reveals to be distractions from God's love, or those the forsaking of which might remind us of God’s love. By our participation with this grace, we are then more open to recognize those ways in which we’ve closed ourselves off from God. In Reconciliation, we turn away from those sins by which we’ve obstructed God's grace, and are restored in our relationship with Him in a unique way. These ministrations of the Holy Spirit bring a joy to our life, and are manifested in a greater desire to seek God’s will ahead of our own. We know that this is all God’s gift to us, not our own accomplishment.
Of course, penitence often doesn't feel ministerial when we're in the midst of it. Sometimes it can feel more like that two-by-four getting our attention. Or it may feel as if we’re being pruned, and the more we've nurtured those wayward limbs, the more the pruning pains us. Yet when it's complete, not only will it not hurt anymore, but the Lord provides growth for new, healthy limbs in place of the old, unbalanced ones. These bring a joy far greater than the small pleasures which we so stubbornly resist giving up and to which we've limited ourselves, and they bear fruit that nourishes us and those around us.
While we are the ones now experiencing the painful death of some previously idolized part of ourselves, it might help us to remember that Christ bore that death long before we decided to participate in it. Our struggle is but the manifestation of his victorious sacrifice in our lives. In this way we may come to understand that it is not, in fact, we who are doing the work of transforming ourselves in some way. We're merely getting ourselves out of the way of the wonderful work he is completing in us.
It is good for us to recall, as well, that we are not the entire vine! As we continue to nurture sub-branches in our lives that grow in unhealthy directions, we're inevitably hurting other branches of the vine. The fact that our limited vision obscures their pain from our consciousness doesn't make it any less real. This is part of why it is so important for us to allow the teaching of the Church to inform our conscience rather than deciding for ourselves what is right and wrong.
Lent and Reconciliation, the season and sacrament of penitence, are about more than our own striving to avoid the sins that have marked our lives, stifled us, and hurt others. Rather, the season and the sacrament represent God speaking our holiness into being in new, unique, and wondrous ways. Each is the equivalent of Jesus giving Peter the opportunity to be reaffirmed and transformed in the aftermath of his denial. That reconciliation has reverberated in our world for nearly two millennia, and we believe that it will continue on for all eternity as we praise God around His throne. Like Peter, we are made holy by God's grace manifested in Christ. The song of repentance and reconciliation which God allows us to sing with Him will carry on in ways we can't foresee, for each voice is the echo of the grace poured out at God's command, the Word who is Himself eternal.
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