Lent – the way to a conversion of the heart.
One thought of the desert fathers says: “The soul is well – if you deepen it, it will be purified, if you fill it up, it will disappear.” Lent is a time when our soul can be purified so that it reflects our face well from the surface and remains a life-giving source of water. In a sense, it could also be compared to a short section of a river, through which water flows and washes it from all sides, sometimes more from the outside but always more from the inside. The flow of the river represents our thoughts, into which information about everything and everyone enters, our places where we live and work, the relationships we have with each other. So it often happens that we click from window to window on the computer, from one job to another, from one partner to another, from one experience to an even greater one. Psychologists refer to today’s time in which we live as a “liquid time”, where everything is moving, just floating around us and we in it. It washes over our soul from all sides and carries us away, despite our will, sometimes tired and even paralyzed, lost in ourselves and distrustful to continue building a relationship with God and our neighbors.
Today we stand on the threshold of the Lenten season, which urges us to “repentance of heart.” And whoever we are, wherever we are and however well we live or fail, this is the promised time in which the Lord lets us find ourselves again. He desires nothing else, only that when he calls in our heart, we have the courage to listen to his voice and find ourselves in it. The psalmist’s words come to life as a call: “Hear his voice today: “Do not harden your hearts” (Psalm 95:8).
In the living tradition of the Church, Lent is experienced as a “journey of repentance.” In prayer, we call on God to make himself known to us and guide us in his word and presence in the midst of our lives. To make our “crossing over the Red Sea” with us. Passage from the “land of the heart” marked by unbelief, revelry, numbness, lassitude, inconstancy, undue hesitation, mistrust of oneself and others, timidity in dialogue, fear of opening up to others, inability to fight with evil and sin. In connection with such a possible disposition of the soul, we may recall the image of a meadow that is gradually consumed by fire.
In the past, pastures were burned to kill the old ones and destroy pests. And even if everything falls to ashes and at first sight the land is decimated, after a while new grass will grow, the meadows will bloom again and life will be renewed on them. Maybe like never before. Shouldn’t something similar happen with our soul? Now is not the time when Jesus also tells us: “I have come to cast fire on the earth; and what do I want? Only to catch fire” (Lk 12, 49)! The fire of God’s Spirit, which burns everything harmful, but ignites hearts in the bud to a true life of God’s love. This internal action of God’s Spirit is well described by the psalmist’s request: “Search me, Lord, and test me, burn my heart and mind with fire” (Ps 26, 2).
Lent is also a “path of conversion,” on which God wants to draw me essentially to himself. From the experience of many, it seems that God will guide us through our “personal weakness.” As Bili Gaham writes in the introduction of the book – Walking by Grace: “However, the truth is that those who rely on themselves quickly burn out. And when we are burned out, destroyed, and down, God teaches us that trusting Christ is more important than trusting only in our own abilities.” (S. MCVEY, Walking by Grace, i527.net, 214, p. 14) An extended history of the soul of a Christian is that his faith does not work as it should or as he would imagine. And so it turns off to perform with the last strength until it breaks. The accompanying sign is that he has been living in superficiality for an extended period of time, thus turning a sincere and searching Christian into a frustrated Christian. This experience of spiritual life is illustrated by the boldly told story of the American pastor in Alabama, Steve McVey. In the already mentioned book, he writes: “It happened on October 6, 1990. The clock in my study showed one after midnight and I was lying on the floor crying. Last year was miserable. I prayed that God would strengthen me, but He had a different plan for me. He made me weaker. And so I lay there – broken and without hope. In seventeen hours I was to give an annual report on the current state of our church. I could fake successes or come out with the truth. But I didn’t have the strength to pretend anything, I didn’t even have the courage to confess, so I just prayed and cried (…). It didn’t make sense to me. Has the God of this congregation called me to prepare a cruel fall for me? Did he not see what he was doing for Him? I had no idea what more he expected from me. I really tried my best. God, what else can I do? Silence. At that moment, it seemed that he was a thousand light years away from me. The burden of failure was suffocating me, and not just as a pastor. I felt that I had also failed as a Christian. If I serve God all my life and it’s still not enough, what else does he want from me?” (S. McVey, p. 19)
In the book, he describes his experience that in a culture where success is required at any cost, it develops on a person incredible pressure. “However, this pressure does not stop at the gates of the church. Many Christians strive to live to please Christ and eventually find that the Christian life does not work out the way they imagined it would. They are sincerely religious people and they try to serve Christ with all their might. Yet they are disgusted because they have some idea of what a Christian should do and they can’t do it. Their spiritual life is not wonderful, but they have come to the opinion that it will not be better.” (S. McVey, p. 21) After all, Christ promised us a blessed life with him, but nevertheless they find themselves in a “life marked by mediocrity.” How mentions, “such Christians long for a victorious Christian life, but do not know how to achieve it.” (S.McVey, p. 22)
Everyone who has become a Christian will find that the most important thing on the path of following the Lord is the bond of faith and the personal relationship of love through which God gives us the grace of salvation. No one can do anything to achieve it alone, as the Lord teaches us. Of course, the effort and will to live from this relationship will come as the next step. But many who converted understood that “our effort to do something for God will not help us experience victory (…). Did the effort bring you a feeling of real joy? For many years of my Christian life I lived in a trap characterized by this cycle: motivation – disgust – new surrender to God.” (S. McVey, p. 22)
This is supported, as he further mentions, by the prevailing opinion that “success comes from absolute surrender things and hard work (…). But it doesn’t work like that in spiritual life (…). Christian life is not based on performance, it is mainly focused on the person of Jesus Christ (…). Many contemporary Christians judge the quality of their spiritual life by whether they live in accordance with religious rules. Finally, they themselves will understand that despite all the efforts, this path leads nowhere.” (S. McVey, p. 28-29) What is the way out in all this, how to continue on the path, when it seems that many things of the spiritual life are no longer in control to stand on “own feet.” Steve confesses: “That morning (…), the Holy Spirit did a saving work in my heart and swallowed me up completely (…). It is a result of his grace in me that I have not experienced in more than eighteen years.” (S. McVey, p. 34)
The next evening he told the whole community from the pulpit that he was convinced “that we should cancel all programs and activities and simply only they began to seek God.” He confided in them that the Lord implanted his words in his mind: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and share in His sufferings” (Phil 3, 10) The result was that “we started more together to pray (…). We started men’s prayer meetings every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Our women gradually began to meet and pray together. Our Bible studies began to focus on a sincere search for God. God similarly worked in our community as in my private life – he gradually broke us.” (S. McVey, p. 34-35)
Steve’s experience of faith shows us that even at this time, the Lord wants to unlearn us from relying on our own thinking strategy to fulfill our needs. The Bible calls this mechanism the body. It contains its own ways: desires, plans, motives, inclinations, with which we try to fulfill our needs without Christ, (cf. S. McVey, p. 35-36) In this situation, I think that “God will put more on your shoulders , than you can bear especially when he wants to break you. God will allow the burden to be greater than you can bear, so that we finally allow Him to carry the burden for you. God’s intention in this educational process is to bring you to the end of your strength, so that you understand that He is the only strength you need in life.” (S. McVey, p. 39) In this season of Lent, we can come to a similar experience as the pastor Steve that we have reached the end of our human possibilities. And then the only thing left for us will be Him. But as he says: “And that was not a bad beginning at all.” (S. McVey, p. 35)
We ask you, Lord, to lead us along your path of salvation to live a happier life of faith. To clean our well from all deposits of passions, bad habits, blocks, fears or prejudices that paralyze our reason, feelings, will, our life of faith and love. Teach us to open our hearts before You, Lord, with humility and courage. Shine a ray of your light into that well of ours. Let it be seen how much and what kind of water is in it. Strengthen us in faith that soon we will drink from it to our heart’s content and with joy we will be able to draw for you and quench your urgent thirst when we hear your voice (from the cross): “I thirst (for you).” (cf. Jn 19 , 28) From now on, I also follow you, Lord.
