FREE to LIVE LIFE

The Backstory

The season of Lent has its origins in third-century Egypt, where there was a commemoration of Jesus’ forty days in the desert. In the Fourth century, these forty days were moved to their present location in the church’s calendar as the final preparation time for baptismal candidates at Easter. Then, in the fifth century, these penitential and baptismal focuses came together as one season for all believers to observe.

The word LENT, from old English, means “Spring” and alerted the earliest Christians (at least in the northern hemisphere) that this season was linked to the waking of nature after the chill and darkness of the winter.

LENT is about WAKING UP to SEE that LIGHT and LIFE have come to us in Christ!

However, over the centuries the Church has tended to place more emphasis on penance than on baptism during the Lenten season. But the second Vatican Council, went BACK to the most ancient sources of this season and RE_ESTABLISHED the “Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults” and Again encourages ALL OF US to see the link between our acts of penance during this season and OUR ONGOING conversions to CHRIST-once expressed in the baptismal promises made for us many years before…..

Today’s Gospel Reading and key message:

John 11:3-7, 17, 20-27, 33b-45, Jesus raising Lazarus from the tomb.

On this last Sunday in Lent, Lazarus is given to us to help us think about the tombs in which we live versus the lives to which we are called by our Baptism. The bad spirit has seduced most of us into having some form of a secretive life. It might be a secret we can’t tell, a sin we can’t confess, or a memory we want to bury. At its worst, it can be a pattern of unethical behavior. We may even con ourselves into believing that all of this is normal and “not SO bad.”

These are OUR “tombs” we GUARD these tombs - jealously, energetically DEFENDING them, --- angry if anyone rolls away the stone and sees the mess inside.

But THIS Sunday Jesus stands at the entrance of our tombs and calls us out of them. We are asked to “Face down” the bad spirit that keeps us locked in secrecy, and to move AWAY from the shame, to embrace repentance, to recognize that the price to be paid has been PAID IN FULL by Jesus.

Be ready to hear the RISEN JESUS say --- even PLEADING to US –

COME FORTH- BE UNBOUND and “you are FREE!”

FREE to LIVE LIFE