Friday of the Third Week of Lent
During our “pandemic year” at the seminary, we had canceled all of the seminarians’ regular breaks and kept them on campus. At first that was fine. We had a lovely Thanksgiving together. Yet immediately after that holiday both the administration and students had the feeling of being stir-crazy. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until then. Feeling responsible for them with no monthly reprieves wore on my nerves in ways that I had grown accustomed until it could not be ignored.
Hosea’s plaintive plea to the Israelites expresses this same sentiment. “Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God,” he says, “you have collapsed through your guilt.” They had trusted in the stronger countries around them for protection and prosperity. They had become obsessed with what they could do for themselves instead of turning to the Lord to “receive what is good.” They were walking wounded without accepting it. For the Lord’s part, he will “heal their defection” and “love them freely; for my wrath is turned away from them.”
Still, human freedom would not be removed. As the saying goes, God can write straight with our crooked lines. Hosea says, “Straight are the paths of the Lord.” However, while God can bring good out of bad – in this case, humbling us and forcing us to expose our weakness and need of Him. The Lord will not force even His good upon us. “Straight are the paths of the Lord, but sinners stumble in them.”
Maybe we have been living with a wound or unhealthy pattern of thinking that has been slowly killing us. Ask God to reveal what it is, to free us from trying to cover it over before others. Then the Lord can send us on straight paths in freedom to allow the redemptive love of His Son shine through – to write straight with crooked lines.
Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources