1st Week of Lent 2020 - Tuesday - Words, words, words

In Scene II, Act II of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark sits in a library, reading a book, when Polonius, the King’s chief counselor asks the melancholy prince, “What do you read, my lord?” And Hamlet replies, “words, words, words.” Of course, Polonius wants to know what Hamlet is reading about, the meaning of the words in the book. Hamlet’s deliberate misinterpretation of Polonius question suggests that the words he is reading are meaningless to him. The words of the page could not penetrate the mind and heart of the melancholy prince.

In our first reading, Isaiah the prophet speaks of how the word of God waters the human soul and does not return to heaven void as did the words of Hamlet’s page.

So, too, the words of prayer the Lord teaches in the Gospel today, are not empty, like the words of the pagans, whose prayers amount to a bunch babbling.

The Word of God brings transformation. It is meant to bear fruit. We are always to approach the scriptures with a hearts and minds ready to be changed by them. We are to be constantly ready to learn from them and be directed by them, to put them into action.

Hamlet could not be moved by words because they were the words of man and symbolic of his own inabilities, his frustrations at accomplishing his plans. But the Word of God brings life to souls and impels us into cooperating with God’s plans.

The Lord called the words of the pagans a bunch of babbling, because they did not wish to be changed by their prayers, they didn’t wish to engage in the work of God, they just wanted to be seen, through their empty words they wished to gain attention for themselves. Rather, the first petition of the prayer Jesus teaches is “Father, Thy Will be Done”.

Hamlet’s melancholy is shared by all who, seeking only after their own wills, their own false gods, end up exhausted and unfilled.

During Lent, we do well to spend much time reflecting upon the word of God, especially our Lenten Mass Readings and the passion narratives, and allow them to till the soil of our hearts and to help us surrender, like Christ, the Father’s will in all things, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the season of Lent may bring the most hardened hearts to repentance and bring to all people purification of sin and selfishness.

For those preparing for baptism and the Easter sacraments, that they may continue to conform themselves to Christ through fervent prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

That we may generously respond to all those in need: the sick, the suffering, the homeless, the imprisoned, and victims of violence. And for all victims of the coronavirus and their families.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy. Through Christ our Lord.