Lent Should Be Lived In The Likeness Of Christ

By Thomas A. Droleskey

The passing of time in this world is one of the many means by 
which we are called to reflect constantly on the First and Last 
Things. How well have we used the time God has given to us to 
serve Him and His Church? How well did we attempt to fulfill the 
precepts of the divine and natural law in a particular year? What 
use have we made of the Sacrament of Penance to seek God's mercy 
for the sins, mortal and venial, we may have committed in a year's 
time? How devoted are we to being people who find in the Eucharist 
and in our Lady the twin pillars of a well-grounded interior life 
of prayer? These questions are particularly relevant during this 
season of Lent.

With the approach of Lent in mind, a former student of mine, whom 
I had not heard from in about six years, telephoned me recently to 
discuss his own reflections on the passage of time in his life. He 
reported a great deal of distress that he had not served Christ 
particularly well during some points of the past year, that some 
of his actions betrayed the very things he knew were for the 
salvation of his own immortal soul, to say nothing of that of 
others. While he had availed himself of the Sacrament of Penance, 
this young man expressed a sense of unworthiness of ever being 
able to be an instrument of the Lord in the midst of the world. 
How could he, who had not measured up to all he knew was right, 
help others to do what he himself at times could not do?

I explained to him that he was having some of the same thoughts as 
one Augustinian monk of the 16th century, one Fr. Martin Luther. 
Luther did not believe that his own struggles against sin could 
ever be resolved. He did not "feel" forgiven in the confessional. 
This prompted the misguided Luther to devise a whole theology 
based on his belief that it was impossible to struggle against 
sin. The only thing we could do was to trust in the fact that we 
professed "faith in Jesus" on our lips, and that that was enough 
to save us. This meant, naturally, that one could sin again and 
again without having to "worry" about consequences; after all, 
"faith in Jesus" meant automatic salvation. This is not a Catholic 
understanding of sin and grace.

Our Lord suffered in His sacred humanity because of sin. Your 
sins, my sins, and the sins of everyone who has ever lived, lives 
now, or will live until the end of time. Sin is no laughing 
matter. While our Lord can no longer suffer physically in His 
glorified Body which is seated at the Father's right hand, He: 
suffers in the persons of the members of His Mystical Body, the 
Church. Each sin introduces disorder into the soul of the sinner -
and into the world at large. It is sin which is responsible for 
the personal and social disorder and unhappiness which are so 
abundant in the world today. All of us who are baptized members of 
the Church have a special obligation to detest sin, to recognize 
how horrible it is, and to cooperate with God's always sufficient 
grace.

Nevertheless, as Fr. Edward Leen wrote in his marvelous book, <In 
the Likeness of Christ>, God uses sin to effect His own ineffable 
Providence. One of the things a person who is conscious of his 
sins (and of the need always to make reparation for them) has to 
learn is that a beneficiary of God's mercy and forgiveness has a 
great obligation to be merciful and forgiving to others. A 
recognition of one's own woundedness and fallibility is supposed 
to make us understanding of the weakness of others. No, we are 
never indifferent about sin in our lives or the lives of others; 
but those who are aware of their own shortcomings are supposed to 
learn how to be truly compassionate to our fellowmen.

We have to avoid the paganism abroad in our land today which gives 
rise to hardness of heart and unforgiveness. Leen's own 
description of how pagans treated each other at the time of our 
Lord's birth is, sadly, quite applicable to our own situation 
today:

"Under the reign of Satan men were hard and unfeeling, without 
pity or tenderness. The one thing they looked up to was the 
physical power to dominate, and the one thing they feared was the 
helplessness of poverty. Their life was divided between pleasure 
and cruelty.... Conversion of heart was for them extremely 
difficult. What God required on the part of man as a necessary 
condition of their friendship with Him was to them abhorrent, for 
the practice of the Christian virtues of submission, humility, and 
patience would be regarded by them as degrading."

We are called by our baptismal vows to be filled with tenderness 
and pity, realizing, of course, that authentic compassion does not 
reaffirm someone in his sins. But neither does it use 
righteousness-to denounce the sinner. Our Lord demonstrated this 
when He forgave the woman caught in adultery. He did not condemn 
her. He told her, however, to sin no more. And the parable of the 
prodigal son tells of how the younger son was welcomed back by his 
father, an image of how the Father accepts us through the merits 
of the shedding of His Son's Most Precious Blood, administered to 
us by the working of the Holy Spirit through the ministry of an 
ordained priest in the confessional.

Leen puts it this way:

With the exception of that comparatively small number of heroic 
men and women who have, from the dawn of consciousness, pursued 
unfalteringly the path of perfection, Christians as a rule belie 
the promises of their Baptism and continually present obstacles to 
the increase of divine grace in their souls. Differing in many 
respects, we are alike in this, that we are all sinners, and that 
we have not only once, but perhaps several times in our lives 
disappointed God."

As I explained to my former student, we have to be honest about 
our sins and be ever ready to accept full responsibility for our 
actions, seeking forgiveness humbly not only from God but from 
those we may have offended. We also have to understand that we 
will suffer because of offenses others have committed against us. 
This is how we can help our Lord redeem the world, as well as to 
make satisfaction for the debt we owe because of our freely 
committed sins.

Again, we turn to Leen:

"In other words, it is the law of things as they actually are that 
we must continually suffer from others; it is the condition of our 
being that we shall be the victims of others' abuse of their free 
wills; it belongs to our position that our desires and 
inclinations should be continually thwarted and that we should be 
at the mercy of circumstances. And it is our duty to bear that 
without resentment and without rebellion. To rebel is to assert 
practically that such things are not our due, that they do not 
belong to our position. It is to refuse to recognize that we are 
fallen members of a fallen race. The moment we feel resentment at 
anything painful that happens to us through the activity of men or 
things, at that moment we are resentful against God's Providence.

"We are in this really protesting against His eternal 
determination to create free beings; for these sufferings which we 
endure are a consequence of the carrying into effect of that free 
determination. If we expect or look for a mode of existence in 
which we shall not endure harshness, unkindness, misunderstanding, 
and injustice, we are actually rebelling against God's Providence, 
we are claiming a position that does not belong to us as 
creatures. This is to sin against humility. It is pride."

To accept the reality of our lives is to accept God's Providence. 
We must be grieved because of our sins. But we cannot take back 
our actions. There is no taking back what is in the past. It is 
done. We need to be chastened by our misdeeds, to resolve to love 
God and others, and not to give in to the Devil's desire to use a 
sense of sorrow for sin as a means to withdraw from the work God 
expects us to do.

To learn from the passing of time in one's life is not to give 
rise to discouragement or despair. It is not to harden our hearts 
toward ourselves-or toward those who may have offended us. Nothing 
that anyone ever does to us is the equal of what just one sin did 
to our Lord on the cross. If He forgives us, then who are we to 
withhold that forgiveness from others?

Moreover, to learn from the passing of time in one's life is to 
trust more fully in God's mercy. As Leen noted:

"It is true that He cannot but look with hatred on sin, and that 
He cannot love us insofar as we are sinners. But He can, and does, 
love us for any little good that remains in us, and above all He 
loves us for what we can possibly become if we respond to the 
pressing appeals of His grace. He does not love sin, but He does 
love those who are sinners, and He never shrinks from contact with 
us, or from our contact with Him, as long as there remains the 
possibility of our rejecting that which is displeasing in His 
sight. It is to wrong Him to think otherwise; and the Devil never 
has got a fully decisive victory over a soul until he has robbed 
it of full confidence in the inexhaustible goodness of the Heart 
of Jesus to the wayward, the faithless, and the sinful. And not 
the very gravest of our infidelities inflict so cruel a wound on 
that Heart, as is that wound that is inflicted on it when we doubt 
of its tenderness and mercy.

"Those who came into contact with Him whilst He lived on earth 
never had this attitude of fear toward Him, even when they 
recognized His awe-inspiring holiness. In spite of the 
consciousness of grave sin that many who approached Him must have 
had, we see no trace in their dealings with Him of their having a 
tendency to shrink from His presence or to dread His approach.... 
It is evident that not only did the Savior show a habitual 
readiness to forgive sin, but He must have exhibited such 
graciousness, tenderness, sympathy, and kindness toward sinners 
that it caused comments and criticism amongst the rigidly 
righteous [the Pharisees]."

The good, the bad, and the ugly of each person's life will be made 
manifest at the General Judgment on the Last Day. Each of us will 
see the mercy and the justice of God. That is why the passage of 
time in our own lives now gives us an opportunity to express 
sorrow for anything and everything that has not been in accord 
with a life of holiness, while at the same time we resolve to 
trust more fully in God's grace to be pleasing in His sight at all 
times in the future. It is God's will that erring sinners learn 
from the past and become saints by the time of their deaths. 

I quoted the following passage of Leen to my former student to 
help him better understand this:

"But when it is a question of the soul and the soul's life-of its 
nearness to or remoteness from God, there are no limits to be 
placed to the extent of His anxious tenderness. Hence, His almost 
extravagant joy when the sinful or the lukewarm, surrendering to 
the assaults of His grace, turn to Him appealingly and cast 
themselves at His feet with a sincere confession of their 
helplessness and a humble appeal for help. The acknowledgment of 
our powerlessness leaves Him, as it were, powerless to resist our 
entreaties."

This article was taken from the February 13, 1997 issue of "The 
Wanderer,"  201 Ohio Street, St. Paul, MN 55107, 612-224-5733. 
Subscription Price: $35.00 per year; six months $20.00.

Copyright (c) 1997 EWTN Online Services.

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