Lenten Reflection

Repent and Believe the Good News!

As uncertainty, anxiety, fear, and anguish linger in our country and our world, we long to experience the relief and joy one has coming out of a dense entangled forest and seeing a clear blue sky overhead. Our faith brings us the good news of God’s mercy and love, assuring us that even in deep woods and unfamiliar places, God is present, alive, and active in our lives. God never leaves us.

As we turn to God and open ourselves to the inflow of God’s love, we grow in our ability to recognize Christ in those we may find difficult and in unfamiliar faces and unexpected places. He is hidden in our broken humanity, in every person without exception. What we do to others, we do to Him. The growth of God’s kingdom of justice, love, and peace where forgiveness, kindness, and mercy abound is inseparable from how each of us chooses to live. This Lent and each new day offer us a new beginning. God is always ready to enlighten, support, and strengthen us and to grace our lives with forgiveness and mercy.

When at times we may feel discouraged or fearful, we can confidently clutch Christ’s merciful robes. Here is how the Carmelite poet, Jessica Powers, describes those moments in her poem The Garments of God.

“God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.

He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.

I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him…

He is clothed in the robes of His mercy,

voluminous garments—

not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,

but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,

and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.

Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal

to the Divinity that I am dust.

Here is the loud profession of my trust…

Here in the dark I clutch the garments of God.”

God welcomes, embraces, and forgives us, raising us up and enlivening us to be followers of Jesus.