Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Today's Mass Readings

“He is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways.”

Ever since God walked with Abraham and Sarah, the Biblical question is the same – ‘Will you come along with me on your journey through life?’ Companionship with God implies holiness, and likeness to God. Doing things God’s way.

We so easily hear it wrong. We think, ‘Oh this is too lofty a walk, I cannot possibly walk with God.’ Then we can dismiss it as not for us. The basic error, I suggest, is that we have come to think of companionship with Christ as a moral life. Of course, it’s not immoral! But it is not a complete way to conceive it. It is a mystical life! That is to say, it is an offer of the Risen Christ to welcome us into his very life. He offers to take us along with him on his walk through time into eternity.

This question then faces us: ‘Am I willing to accept intimate friendship with the God-man?’ Am I willing to believe that no matter what befalls me, God’s Divine Presence is not gone? It certainly may be hidden, as it was for so long with St. Theresa of Calcutta, but not gone. Sr. Wendy Beckett has a nice way of putting it: “He comes in ‘life,’ just as it is. The as-it-isness is precisely how He comes. If we look for him in certain patterns or forms, we only receive a fraction.”

So very often this comes down to patience in living. Hear it in the first chapter of St. James’ letter: “patience too is to have its practical results so that you will become fully developed, complete, with nothing missing.”

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB