Today, is a reminder that true joy only comes from God. And when we make room in our hearts for him through penance, we fast from the things that keep us from hungering for Him, when we allow him to fill our hearts through prayer, we become filled with joy. If you haven’t experience yet, during this season, maybe you aren’t doing it right? For Lenten joy abounds with all of the opportunities to turn our hearts to God.
One of my favorite cinematic images of Lenten joy comes from a very good movie called “The Mission” starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons. If you haven't seen it, it's worth the time. The Mission is the story of the Spanish Jesuits who go to South America to bring Christianity to the natives there. Robert DeNiro plays a slave trader. He had spent years treating the natives as a commodity, often murdering them like cattle. After he catches his wife and brother in the act of adultery, he murders his brother, and spirals into a terrible depression. Then something amazing happens: DeNiro's character becomes attracted to the Christian faith preached by the Jesuits and embraced by the natives.
For a life of enslaving and murdering, he makes a confession of his sins, and undertakes a serious penance. With a backpack filled with weapons and armor, symbols of his old life of violence, he climbs up this gigantic waterfall. And the deeply moving scene of the movie is when after this tremendous strenuous penitential climb, he reaches the top of the waterfall, and surrounded by the Jesuits and Natives, he is embraced by both, and then falls to his knees. Overwhelmed by the mercy of Christ and his own sorrow for his sins, he begins to weep and laugh for joy at the same time. He experiences the sorrow of being a sinner and the joy of being a forgiven sinner at the same time. Where there was only guilt and depression, through his penance, he opened himself to be touched by God. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced anything like that…but it changes your life.
A powerful image of Lenten joy, indeed With great sorrow for our sins, we go to confession, we undergo penances of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and thereby open ourselves to God in a new way. We are changed internally, as we seek to conform our actions and our life to God.
St. Paul writes about the profound change that occurs in the soul when it comes to Christ in our reading this weekend: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” In Christ, the sinner is transformed into something new. Something awakens that was dormant in the soul, something that was dead is revived. Blindness, like that of the blind man in the Gospel today, is transformed into sight. Hatred and coldness and selfishness is transformed into love, when Christ is truly encountered as Savior.
Our Lenten penances, our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—our stripping away the non-essentials to create pockets of silence and reflection—these things are meant to awaken something in us. But, maybe that’s why some of us find Lent so hard or unagreeable. We don’t want anything to awaken. We like our lives just the way they are. We like our earthly comforts. We like our isolation. We sense that if we became quieter, something might awaken that we don’t have control over. And so, we prefer spiritual blindness because we are afraid what we might see.
Some of us resist the whole idea of admitting guilt. And that is to the great detriment of our church and our mission. I don’t want to climb up a waterfall with the reminders of my sins on my back. I don’t want the Lord to spread muddy saliva on my eyes. It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to look at the ways I’ve hurt or betrayed others with my words or actions. It’s humiliating. Yes, it is. But it’s the secret of the saints. With the sincere admission of guilt and penance for our sins comes great sanctity.
Saint John Paul II lamented what he called the loss of the sense of sin. He called it a crisis in the Church and the world that so many of us fail to acknowledge the destructive power that sin has in our society and our own souls. Pope Francis echoing Saint John Paul said recently that “When you lose the sense of sin, you lose the sense of the Kingdom of God." If we deny the fact that we are sinners, we deny our need for Christ.
But remember, when Peter at the last supper, defiantly resisted the washing of his feet, and said to Jesus “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me.”
Again, the good news, especially of Laetare Sunday is that Jesus does offer to wash us, he does offer to forgive us in the Sacrament of Confession, he does offer to place his hands on our eyes to heal our blindness, he offers to place his hands on our hearts to heal its coldness. Jesus beckons us, he calls us to repentance that we may know the joy of being redeemed sinners, and that his kingdom make take deeper root in our hearts.
With the time that we have left of this most holy season, may the Holy Spirit help each of us to identify those selfish and sinful attitudes and behaviors and attachments which keep us from knowing the joy God wants for us. May we have the courage to do the penances we ought to, and allow ourselves to be washed by God’s mercy, and come to know the joy of his goodness dwelling within us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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