Greetings.
Here we are entering the first week of our Lenten Season. A time to ware sackcloth and ashes. A time of fasting, a time of penance and “paying” for the sins we have committed against God and one another. It is a time to repent.
Sounds good. Maybe if we were in the 1940’s. Today we view Lent in a very different way. We need to put away the negative idea of Lent and look at the positive, of what Lent can enable us to become the people God is calling us to be.
In the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, we read about God and the creation of the universe. At the end of the first chapter, God creates humans, looks upon what He has made and we read, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”
God did not make us perfect. He did not give us free will so that we would only do what He wanted. And, God did not create us just to toss aside and say, “Well, maybe we need to try another recipe.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells us,” God refuses to give up, and we who are enlisted to be fellow workers with God know that only reason we continue is that death did not have the last word; that Good Friday was not the end of the story.” Maybe we need to read the end of that last sentence again. “Good Friday was not the end of the story.” Maybe a more correct ending of that sentence should be, “Once upon a time . . . there was a holy man named Jesus who went among the people telling them just how much God loves them.
Maybe we need to read this story with new eyes and a mind open to new possibilities.
Remember, “God don’t make junk!!!”
Peace and All Good
Fr. Vinnie, fcm and the
Bros and Srs of the
Franciscan House of Prayer.
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