Let Go, Let God (Ash Wednesday)

My own way of entering into the season of Lent is to consider it as a grace-filled opportunity to choose God rather than myself. My motto this season is: That God may increase; and I decrease.

All too often, we find ourselves usually preoccupied with concerns for the self. In short, there are many occasions when we have been self-centered. When we are still children and dependent, we need attention and care from those whom we rely for our subsistence. Oftentimes, we fail to outgrow this selfish need so that even if we have grown already we tend to view life from a child’s point of view. We remain self-centered.

The sign of maturity is transcendence. When we have grown, we are called to transcend our initial self-centeredness and begin to reach out to others. We are called to become other-centered. Ultimately, we are drawn by God to himself. We are invited to be God-centered.

The season of Lent facilitates our call to make God first in our life, to choose God rather than the self. The rite of the imposition of ashes on our forehead reminds us of this invitation.

“Turn away from your sins; and believe in the Gospel.” There are two directions in this one and the same movement: Turning away and turning towards. We are invited to turn away from sins. Our sins are our acts of rejecting God and choosing ourselves instead. To turn away from my sins then can mean to redirect my love from myself to God. To turn away in this case means to turn towards God.

It is difficult to turn away from something without someone or anything to go towards. It’s emptiness. No wonder, many who wanted to change their lives ended up in even worse condition. Why? Because they have not embraced God. Only the goodness of God can fill the void left by turning away from sins. So that what’s really essential and life-changing is the turning towards God. When we train our heart to God, we are empowered to leave everything behind. When we have God, anything else including self is secondary.

After all, the ashes on our forehead remind us of our nothingness. Only God gives us our worth. Only his love dignifies us. Without God, we are but dust.

It’s good to enter into the season of Lent indeed. It allows us to see God and ourselves in the proper perspective. God should be the God of my life. It is foolishness and sheer stupidity to insist on putting myself in stead of him.

The gospel reading today (Mt 6:1-6, 16-18) presents three religious practices linked with the season of Lent: fasting, almsgiving, prayer. Each of these, we will see, is meant to help us transcend our selfishness and ultimately embrace God dearly.

Fasting trains us to renounce even the necessary nourishment our bodies require. When we fast, we transcend even our basic bodily needs. We can only do this, when we see God as more important to our lives than food. This practice allows us to actually show to ourselves that God is the God of our lives. We fast not only from food but also from other created goods we deem significant. They are significant but only secondary to God.
When we fast then, we choose God over any beautiful and valuable created things.

Almsgiving obviously calls for transcendence too. Almsgiving trains us to see beyond our own needs. We become sensitive to the needs of others. A self-centered person will find it difficult to share his graces. But a person who truly loves, one that has the eyes and the heart to see and feel the needs of others, will rejoice in every opportunity to share whatever he has. Lent is a season that invites us to have loving eyes and hearts to see beyond ourselves and reach out to the needy brothers and sisters who are the presence of Jesus in our midst.

Prayer is our spirit transcending every vestige of self-centeredness to reach out to God. It is a privilege place to encounter God, who is our love. In prayer, we commune with God and allow ourselves to be lost in him. In prayer, we lovingly embrace God. Or more correctly, we allow God to lovingly embrace us. It is this incomparable consolation that gives us the confidence to “let go and let God.”

What are the forms of self-centeredness in my life? May the season of Lent give me the grace to transcend my selfishness and to submit myself to God’s loving embrace.

Stop Worrying, Trust in God (8th Sunday Ordinary A)

I used to worry a lot. I was always on my toes and was often nervous. I was worried about what others would think of me, most especially, the ones whose opinion I deemed important in my life foremost of whom was my father. I was anxious about measuring up to expectations and worried that I might fall short.  This basic fear of not being appreciated or loved because of the feeling that even my best was not good enough spawned a lot more forms of useless worrying that made me quite unhappy.

But everything has changed.  The change all started when God became real to me—when I learned that what matters most is how God sees me, when I began to trust in God rather than in my own creativity, when I realized that God embraces me still lovingly even when I am at my worst.  Allowing God to be God of my life has given me tremendous peace of mind and joy in my heart. Indeed, there’s no use worrying when God is one’s refuge and fortress, God, in whom one trusts (Ps 91:2).

Today’s readings affirm my own journey to freedom.  With confidence, I extend to all with open minds and hearts the invitation of our Lord in today’s Gospel reading:  STOP WORRYING. TRUST IN GOD. Our readings offer us three assurances that free us from our worthless anxieties:

Stop worrying because God never forgets. The people of Israel were suffering in exile during the Babylonian captivity. They were losing hope and were ready to concede that God has abandoned them as recounted in our first reading (Is 49:14-15): Zion said: “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” But through the prophet Isaiah, God spoke his assurance: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

God somehow is compared here to a mother.  A mother always cares for her child. But still a mother’s love may fail sometimes. We experience this failure more and more in our contemporary culture of death, when millions of mothers reject the baby in their womb. Then God assures us that even if a mother’s love fails, his love never fails. God never forgets his people.

When we experience being forgotten or unrecognized, we naturally worry about pleasing significant others in order to catch their attention. Worse, when we are abandoned by people who ought to care for us, we live day by day in insecurity, fear, and even anger. Today, God offers us freedom.  He assures us that He has not forgotten us. He cannot abandon us. Our names are etched in his palm.

Stop worrying. Seek the Lord. Open your heart to God. He has never forgotten you.

Stop worrying because God always provides.  In this consumerist society we have now, we worry a lot about material amenities in life. We worry even about things we actually do not need but want.  So we work like a horse not because we enjoy it but because we worry about many things.  Or even if we are not really materialistic, we still worry that we might not have the things we need to support ourselves and our family.  Hence, many are tempted or misled to serve mammon rather than God.

Jesus assures us in today’s gospel reading (Mt. 6:24-34) that God always provides. So he invites us to stop worrying.  Nature shows indubitable evidences of God’s sustaining care for the birds, the grass, flowers, etc.  We have to accept that we are far more important to God than these.  We are his children in Christ; He ensures all the more that we have what we need.

This assurance, however, does not encourage indolence or irresponsibility. Let us remember that the Lord praises the responsible steward. The Lord does not say “stop working.”  What he says is “stop worrying;” stop enslaving yourselves to your material pursuit to the point of ignoring God.  Only the non-believers worry for provisions in life because they do not believe in God. But we continue to work and plan for our present needs and that of the future without worrying.  Let us trust in the providence of God.  God surely brings our labor into fruition.

Stop worrying because God sees the goodness in your heart.  We worry about what people say of us; we stressfully live up to other’s high expectations of us. We worry about proving ourselves to others—that we are good or we are the best. We worry because we crave for the approving pat on our shoulders. We worry because we have come to believe that what others say of me matters most.

St. Paul, in the second reading (1 Cor 4:1-5), testifies that he does not worry about what other say of him: “It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord” (v. 3-4).  For St. Paul, what matters to him is how God sees his heart. He believes that the Lord “manifests the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God” (v. 5).

Hence, we can stop worrying about what people say of us. Let us be good. Let us be good even if nobody gives us a pat on the back or even if others may maliciously misinterpret our goodness.  Let us be good and not worry. God sees the goodness in our hearts. This is what matters.   

Again, we can drastically improve the quality of our lives through the secret that Jesus has revealed to us:  STOP WORRYING. TRUST IN GOD.