+WE ARE TO CULTIVATE THE GROUND OF OUR HEARTS 3rd Sun. Lent 2025
This third Sunday of Lent is a time to take stock of how we living this season. It is a time to let our hearts be purified, a time to reflect on the seriousness of our observance, the authenticity of our Christian lives. We are a chosen and precious people, blessed in so many ways but ever in need of interior growth, of being honest about the integrity of our lives. Like Moses and St Paul we too are to be living messengers of the kingdom of God.
We just heard of Moses being shown a bush that was burning but not consumed. We too, as we gather around this altar, are on holy ground. Through the sacred texts we have just heard, God is being revealed to us that we might hear God’s voice more than ever in our world of today. It is a time to deepen our prayer, a time of fasting and almsgiving so that we may be faithful witnesses to what God is saying at this moment of human history.
We are faced with a mysterious presence as was Moses when he asked for God’s name and was told: “I am who am.” To open our hearts to this presence means being as attentive as we possibly can through prayer, the discipline of our bodily wants and reaching out to those who are suffering one way or other.
St Paul alerts us of the danger of becoming too comfortable with our religious observance. It is not enough have eaten spiritual food, or to have drunk from “a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was the Christ.” We are not to think of ourselves as “standing secure” lest we begin to desire evil things and begin to grumble. We are to let the whole of our lives, in all that we think, do or say each day be transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Our gospel presents us with two terrible instances of human suffering among the Galileans and the people on whom the tower of Siloam fell. We might think of the terrible fires that consumed homes on the west coast and are threatening other areas even as we are gathered here. There are those who have lost homes and businesses from awful flooding, or this past week of the many tornados that touched down where they lived. Do we think they are any more guilty than everyone else living on this land?
These events should help us all to take stock of our lives. I know that when I take a careful look at what is happening in our world, I find myself wondering about the values of the persons mostly responsible for what is happening before our very eyes. Are there Christian principles guiding them or is there very little interest in God’s will or presence in our world. Are we caring for and loving one another or are there mostly self-interests guiding us?
This season encourages us to take a careful look at our lives and the lives of those guiding our Church and society and to pray that we may all be guided by the truth love Christ has revealed to us. If our lives are not bearing the fruits of the Spirit, they are in danger of being cut down and thrown into the fire. Our loving God is very patient but let us be careful to cultivate the ground and fertilize our life together through our Lenten observances, so that we may bear abundant fruit for eternal life.
Exod 3:1-8a, 13-15; 1 Cor 10:1-6,10-12; Luke 13:1-9