Lent Bulletin Insert

The Continuum: Fr. Wells' bulletin inserts

In today's Gospel, our dear Lord invites us to join Him on a journey, a journey which will end at the foot of His cross. This is an invitation to join Him once again for the forty day pilgrimage which we make together in His church in the holy season of Lent. As the Twelve “understood none of these things,” we might not understand the purpose or value of any special Lenten observance. When Lenten rules are outlined each Quinquagesima Sunday, for many of us “this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.” We find ourselves in today's Gospel as the blind man. His physical blindness echoes the spiritual blindness of the Twelve. He came to Jesus begging for a miracle: “And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.” Remember that Baptism, which in ancient times was the climax and conclusion of Lent, is presented in the NT and in the Church Fathers as an “enlightenment,” the gift of spiritual sight. Lent can be for us, if we use it holy season properly, a rescue and healing from spiritual blindness. Lent is not, emphatically not a “religious emphasis season” when we do things we can leave behind at the end of Holy Week. It is always sad to see the drop in attendance which seems inevitable after Easter Day. Lent is a time to develop new habits of spiritual discipline. It is a time to learn the value of keeping every Friday of the year (save those in Christmastide) meatless, as a weekly memorial of our Lord's death. The habits of Bible reading and keeping a personal prayer life should take root in our lives for the remainder of the year. In our study of today's Epistle, we have been re-reading a fine little book by D. A. Carson with an unusual title: _The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God_. The author points out the necessity for calling the love of God a “difficult” topic. Had he written “the difficult doctrine of the Trinity,” or “the difficult doctrine of predestination,” it would have caused no surprise, since everyone agrees those are challenging or controversial topics. But what is “difficult” about the love of God? Everyone assumes that God's love is an easy and self-explanatory matter. Today's Epistle is St. Paul's great hymn on charity, an unusual poetic outburst on his part.

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