“Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God” (Joel 2:13). Today, we begin the Lenten Season: forty days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving; a season of beginning anew as we rend and move our hearts towards the healing power of God’s mercy-full love.
In the days of old, faithful God – full of love – offered numerous promises of redemption and restoration to the chosen people of Israel – which he fulfilled faithfully – in spite of their unfaithfulness. In our day, God continues to reach out to us with the promise and the gift of salvation. He reminds us of our place in his eternal plan to save us and to live with him forever. His grace is not vain; his love and mercy is everlasting. The Lord says: “even now…return to me with your whole heart…” (Joel 2:12).
Return! God invites us for a penitential journey: he gives us an opportunity to repent – so that we can begin anew, empowered by his grace and sheltering in his mercy. He desires our undivided hearts; he desires remorseful and humbled hearts that are ready to surrender to his renewing and transforming grace.
Return! It does not matter how far you have strayed; it does not matter where you are on your journey of faith; it does not matter what is enslaving your heart, your life, your conscience! Return to the Lord! Bring with you your shame, guilt, spiritual dryness, lukewarm faith, fear and doubt – warts and all! Bring your faith and trust! Turn-around so that you can look at the Face of God who is passionately awaiting your return. Look nowhere else: it is only in God that we find true meaning – true joy – of our lives.
St. Paul tells us “behold, now is the very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2b). The word ‘behold’ has a sense of immediacy and an invitation to pay attention to something. This time, now, God wants to renew you; God wants to save you; God wants to give back what was lost when you strayed from him; God wants to ‘wash away your guilt…cleanse your sin and, in his grace, to create a pure heart for you and put a steadfast spirit within you’ (Psalm 51). All God is asking of each of us is to return to him – where we truly belong.
Therefore, as we begin this Lenten Season, amidst these troubled and uncertain times of Covid-19, which have sired economic and financial instabilities, we can trust God to renew and to revive our bowed and bound spirits. With this trust, then, come to God for a new beginning: do not be held back by the pains and failures of yesterday. Open your heart that he can fill it with divine rewards. Remember, to begin anew you do not have to start afresh!
Return to the Lord and dwell in the presence of the Most High: for “with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption” (Psalm 130:7).
As you choose to return, the journey back will be fulfilling for those who make a firm decision, a choice, and a commitment to let go and to let God!