ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Lent I – High Mass 25 February 2007 Year C.
Fr Ivan Aquilina

We stand, shoulder to shoulder, at the foot of Golgotha. We look up and see the cross; its shadow is falling over us.

Lent is a time of silence, profound silence in which we internalise the image of the cross. We did this physically last Wednesday as the cross was traced on our forehead, we will do this in a deeper way on the Holy Vigil of Easter when we renew our baptismal promises and so we die with Christ and with him we rise to new life.

Lent is the time to get ready to live the cross; it is “time out” of time to see how deep the cross is planted within me as Christian and within us as Church. It is the time to silently prepare our soul to be the soil in which the fertile cross is planted.

Our readings suggest attitudes for us to nurture in order to live the saving and life-giving cross:
From the Old Testament reading we pick the attitude of thankfulness. Thankfulness can also be described as that attitude which does not allow us to take things for granted but instils that graciousness that collects those crumbs which fill twelve baskets when everyone has been fed.

Lent is that silent time when we come to know ourselves and recognise in us the beauty of God’s face. Anxiety vanishes as we delight in what God has wrought in us, and we offer it back to him as our first fruit offering. We will than be able to enjoy what God has wrought around us, in nature, in the places were we work and play and in each other. Recognising God’s work in each other means we appreciate what those around us do and so avoid envy or jealousy. God is present all around us; we live in him like fish live in the sea. This is what thankfulness leads us to, the practice of the presence of God, that God who became so near to us on the cross the place where his love is made tangible.

From the second reading we pick up the attitude of the act of faith. Faith is also complete trust in God. Around St Paul existed many pagan and Hebrew busy bodies who did everything they could to appease God and bring salvation. Paul laughs at busy bodies and says that we do not need to scale the heights and plumb the depths as the Incarnation and Resurrection have been brought about already by Christ. We are asked to accept in faith what God has wrought in Jesus Christ, to confess that Jesus is Lord and live by the light of what he said. In other words planting in us the cross is to be minded as Christ is minded, one with his thought. It is in the Gospel that his holy mind can be glimpsed; we need silent listening and an act of Faith in Christ’s words.

Finally from the gospel we pick up the attitude of courage. It takes courage to walk in the desert. It takes courage to face oneself and one’s demons. It takes courage to recognise ones fears and limitations. Yet in the desert we are not alone, there we share in the experience of Christ, fighting discouragement by his act of faith, by his thankfulness to what he had received, all this in the enveloping silence of the desert. Look at the courage of Christ, the courage to be in a scary uncomfortable place. The courage to go in a lonely place. That courage transforms the desert in a place of struggle, a place of victory, a place of glory. It takes courage to take up the cross, to climb the cross and change it from a place of death to a source of eternal life. It takes courage to do ones duty in a hostile environment. It takes courage to proclaim the liberating gospel in a self imprisoned and judgmental world that squeaks fundamentalism when it sees true disciples of Christ. It takes courage to climb the cross with Jesus, to live it and bring it to those who need it so badly.

What would have happened without the courage of Christ, of his mother, of the twelve which seemed always scared, of the noble army of martyrs of those countless Christians who right now are being tortured, imprisoned, and ridiculed because of their faith?

Let us keep a silent lent. A lent of thankfulness, a lent of faith a lent of courage. Let us stand still at the foot of the cross and in that silence and stillness let us allow the cross to have the last word.