St. Paul has laid out for us the attitude that we should have as we enter this season. We must enter with undying Charity. In Charity we receive the truth, and believe, and endure all things. Jesus was motivated by love for us as He freely and willingly went into Jerusalem to suffer and die so that we may live.
Our Holy Mother the Church will have us follow Jesus at least in spirit as we enter the season of Lent. It is a time for us to do penance, but not just penance tolerated, it should be penance embraced and lovingly sought after.
What Jesus went into Jerusalem to suffer was unimaginable and so it was that even though He spoke clearly the Apostles did not understand Him. This was hidden from their eyes until they were filled with God’s grace.
We too often find it incomprehensible that Jesus – the Son of God – had to suffer so much. As we consider the sufferings of Jesus we are brought to a reflection of the malice and evilness of our sins. It was for our sins that the suffering of Jesus was necessary. We are asked to strive for a complete hatred and detestation of our sins, as we come to understand the heinousness of them.
With this hatred for our sins we are asked to do penance for them. This hatred though is balanced by Charity. We are reminded that we must do penance for the love of God. The love of God goes hand in hand with the hatred for our sins. In this spirit we find it a pleasure to do penance because it gives us a means to join our sufferings with Jesus and attest to our hatred for our rebellion (sin) against God.
In our sins we are like the blind man sitting by the wayside begging. The sinner is truly blind to the truth and he lives his life in a virtual reality – imagining all is well in his sins. He is much to be pitied because unless his eyes are opened to his own real misfortune he will never seek to remove himself from his misfortune.
Thus it is necessary for us sinners to imitate the blind man in today’s Gospel. We must cry out in our prayers for Jesus the Son of David to have mercy upon us. In this prayer of ours we will discover the same difficulty that this blind man found. As the blind man cried out the people tried to silence him and his importunity. Likewise, our sins and the devils will attempt to silence our prayers to God. The evil within us and the evil outside us will all conspire to silence any and all prayers that we attempt to make.
It is necessary that at this juncture when our prayers are full of distractions or we are tempted to think that our prayers are useless or a waste of time that we renew our faith and imitation of this blind man; and cry out all the louder in our prayers.
It is this faith that encourages the blind man’s boldness and importunity. It is this man’s importunity that causes Jesus to stop His travels and have the blind man brought to Him, and hears his request and grants the miracle that he seeks.
This, I think, is the method that we must use to overcome so many obstacles in our prayers and penances. We must ignore and block out the “reasonableness” of the world and the devils. We must cry out louder and louder in our prayers and penances. Rather than to do less, we must do more.
Let us approach the Lenten season lovingly and willingly. Let us embrace penance for the love of God and hatred for our past sins. Let us increase our faith so that we will unashamedly pray and do penance with increasing fervor as the temptations increase to try and stop us.
May the blind man in today’s Gospel intercede for us so that we may receive the grace of loving perseverance and fortitude in all our prayers and penances.