Just one human life can change the
world, as I reflected here last week.
Those lives that fulfilled that potential, and who “used that power for
good,” as a movie script might say, are worth celebrating.
This is a quite literally a revolutionary
notion; it fueled the American Revolution.
But rarely do such civil revolutions result in the desired opportunity,
since they are not often founded on the personal revolution required for human
beings to raise their own lives to the level of virtue of which they are
capable. The Founding Fathers never
ceased to call both the children of their families and the citizens of the
nation they founded to put aside selfishness and strive for virtue.
The foundation of this hope and
this vision is precisely the one life that saves the world, Jesus of
Nazareth. The tiny infant we so recently
greeted, we will soon see executed by religious and political processes he did
not seek to overturn. Our liturgy moves
straight through his death to his resurrection and ascension, as may and as must
we all. This is the full potential of
human life in Christ.
We are daily bombarded by commentary
and commercials that assail us with what we need to change about other people,
and what we need to purchase in order for our lives to change. Both lines of thought lead us away from the
change that is genuinely possible and uniquely necessary: the change of
ourselves.
This week we begin the season of
Lent, the time the Church sets aside for all her members to change, whatever
their state in life, their age, their responsibility, or their achievement. This is the necessary step that cannot be
omitted on the path to changing the world for the good: changing the one life
that we have control over – our own.
In other words, forget chocolate
and forget beer. Go big or go home –
which exhortation actually works well for Lent, when many folks settle for
giving up something little, to which
they return comfortably when the season ends.
So don’t just change your diet, change your lives! Or as the prophet Joel tells it, Rend you hearts, not your garments. (Joel 2:13)
The Prophet continues: Return
to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and
abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil. So by going back – back to our Creator,
back to our Father – we move ahead. To
make progress toward what is truly new, we return to our source and find there, in
Him, our goal. By this we change, with
our desire and our cooperation, and by the powerful work of grace in our lives
because of our intimacy with Jesus the Lord.
Changing our souls, we begin to change the world.
On our parish letterhead and over
the arch that leads to the doors in our church, my predecessor Father William
Thompson printed the statement from our patroness Saint Bernadette
Soubirous: I must become a saint; my Jesus expects it. Through the sacraments of the Church, God
makes this possible; through the Constitution of the United States, our nation frees
us to achieve it. Any change in the
world, any change for good, is brought about by what we do with our one human
life. Go ahead and do it! Do it now;
you have the power.
Monsignor
Smith
