Homily: 27th Week in Ordinary Time - Tuesday - Lent in October?

Jonah 3:1-10 View Readings

Psalm 130:1-4, 7-8

Luke 10:38-42

Every year we hear this passage from the prophet Jonah on the first week of Lent, 7 days after Ash Wednesday.  It’s one of the most dramatic responses to the call to repentance in the entire old testament: a city of about 120,000 people all come to repent the nobility, the peasantry, show signs of their repentance by fasting, covering themselves with sackcloth, and sitting in ashes.

We begin Lent on Ash Wednesday doing the exact same thing—with fasting and the imposition of ashes on our foreheads.  And throughout Lent we undertake practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—visible and external signs of our internal sorrow for our sins.

Repentance is a pre-requisite for new spiritual life.  Repentance seeks to end the cycle of sin by acknowledging it with heartfelt sorrow and firmly resolving to sin no more.  Repentance ends the illusion that we buy into when we sin—the illusion that independence from God and his commandments brings the fulfillment we long for.

There was an order of monks who take as one of their mottoes: “Semper Quadragesima”—which means, “Always Lent”.  They seek to live, all year round, in that penitential Lenten Spirit because it is so effective in disposing us to the new spiritual life God wants to  bring forth in us.  And there is some wisdom to that idea of “Semper Quadragesima” because if we are not actively seeking to be free from selfishness and to grow in generosity and charity, then we are in trouble.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, are taken up, particularly during Lent, but they are meant to be part of our normal spiritual growth. 

In the Gospel, Jesus rebuked Martha for being anxious about many things and not focusing on the one thing that really matter, namely, Himself, his presence in her life.  Selfishness and self-centeredness are always enemies in the spiritual life.  Lent is always wonderful for helping us to focus on the truly essential, which should really be a spiritual practice all year round.

Semper Quadragesima—always Lent.  Today, it would be quite fitting to consider the sort of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we might be called to all year round, to help our hearts be ever more centered on Christ. 

May we be generous in surrendering all the different parts of our life to God’s transforming mercy, and allow God to reform, reshape, and renew us today and everyday, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.