Lenten Season Message – Return To The Lord
Come back to me with all your hearts..
[simpleazon-image align=”right” asin=”1568545304″ locale=”us” height=”375″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51pPQfV3xQL.jpg” width=”260″]The beautiful and holy season of Lent is with us again, and God in His infinite goodness and mercy has speared our lives to see yet another Lenten season. The season of Lent is one that should not be wasted. We should utilize the graces that will be poured out this Lenten season, to draw ever so much closer to God, through Jesus Christ His Son. In fact, every day that we live should be treated as if it were our last day, and we should always be seeking to be reconciled with God.
In many parts of the world, the Lenten season would have been preceded by carnival. While there is tremendous creativity in carnival, there is also an abundance of sin. many, under the guise of “culture” use this time for excesses. They drink too much, party too much and desecrate their bodies – the temples of the Holy Spirit. Only this morning, on my way to work, I overheard two young ladies speaking; one was telling the other that she wished today was a holiday because she was “like soo stale drunk!” Many, after over indulging and desecrating their bodies, will go for ashes on Ash Wednesday, thinking that they have fulfilled their duty. The problem there is that there is no real conversion. Real conversion comes from the heart, and is the turning away from all that offends God – the excesses of alcohol, the excesses of parties and fetes; the desecration of the body – the temple of the Holy Spirit.
In today’s reading, you will hear God appealing to us all to, “come back to me with all your hearts, with fasting and weeping and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God.” In typical Trini parlance, you can say that God, the lover of our souls, has a serious tabanka. He loves us soo much that when He sees us living lives of sin, knowing that sin will destroy us, it literally breaks His heart. So when on Ash Wednesday, after spending all that time with the ‘outside lover’ called sin – in what ever form it takes, we come to God, the true Lover of our souls; spend a little time, take a little bit of ashes, we might even receive his Son Jesus in the Holy Eucharist; then we go right back to the “outside lover”, we are just mamaguying God and fooling ourselves in the process. While we do this, we are also playing russian roulette with our salvation.
If you are reading this, then bless the Lord. He has given you another day with which to draw nearer to Him. Please make full use of every moment that you live. Use it to come to know Jesus better. The know of which I speak here is not head knowledge. It is rather to allow the knowledge of God’s love to penetrate your heart and transform your life, so that you may come to see things as they really are. And in seeing things are they really are, you may come to see and to know and to desire more than anything else in this world, the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus His Son,
Repentance is a happy time. It is a time when our souls find rest in the mercy of God. This Ash Wednesday, this Lenten Season, let us give up our infidelity to God. Let us pray for the grace to sever all relationships with the “outside lover” for there is no life there; only eternal death and damnation. Let us earnestly choose not to break God’s heart. Let us heed His call to come back to Him with all your hearts.
