Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent
You, O LORD of hosts, O just judge, searcher of mind and heart…
One of the mysterious aspects of God’s search for us is his knowledge of our sinfulness. Our sins are a mysterious part of our lives. We think we know why we do this or avoid that. Yet there remains a mystery about it, something we have all experienced, something we do not quite understand, something we cannot quite get a hold on. ‘Why did I do that? What made me not do this?’
It is when we bring this mystery before the Searcher-of-mind-and-heart, the One who knows us, that we begin to understand a little, sin in our lives. As we allow God to search our minds and hearts so that we discover our sinfulness, we learn who we are in God’s eyes— a creature!
It can have a very positive outlook for our lives. It is beautifully expressed in a term from the Desert Fathers: penthos. Fr. George Maloney tells us what this is:
An abiding sense of our inner, creaturely poverty before the rich lovingness of God. This is given to the Anawim, the Remnant of God’s poor ones in spirit who dare to confront their nonbeing, their state of nothingness before God’s Allness.
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
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