[Music]
Welcome to the fourth week of Lent. This is the toughest part of Lent for many of us. Oftentimes, at this stage of Lent, we can get caught off guard by the length of it. Right, we’ve longer than halfway, but we’re not at the end. And this is where, at least in my experience of Lent, we are tempted to cheat either on those fast days or in any temptation with your penance. Right? And it’s usually around the fourth week of Lent that if you give yourself permission to cheat once, we’re just kind of opening up the door to cheating. And that usually is what compromises the end of Lent. And oftentimes, we don’t end with the strength or fervor that we started with, and our expectations aren’t met.
At the same time, this is the time of Lent, when we can feel that interior fatigue. You know, for some of us, if the Lord has been placing some more serious things on our hearts, we’ve been going real deep with the Lord. There can be an intensity in our prayer and that can bring with it a little fatigue either in the consideration of those more profound things in life or just the historical fatigue that has been there as we’ve just been kind of repressing those things or kind of keeping those hidden away. That fatigue pops up to the surface.
In fact, as we find ourselves in this fourth week, let’s just kind of recap where we’ve been together. Right? Last time that we were together as we were unpacking the Samaritan woman at the well, we ended with an invitation for us to ask ourselves what do we really want. Like, what did we want more of in life? And as we have that conversation with ourselves, it’s important for us to just take stock of life with the expectations that we have.
You see, this is what happens when we’re younger, and we’re dreaming about what life is gonna look like when we’re older. A few have taken to consideration the realities of life—that the struggles of life or the seasons that we go through in life. With our expectations not met, we then compare where we are to where we either think we should be or where we thought we were going to be. And then, with the disappointment that’s there with the unmet expectations, we can often settle. And we can believe that life as we know it now is as good as it gets.
Let me tell you a little bit about my life when I was younger. I was dreaming about what life was gonna look like in… And when I was younger, I didn’t take into consideration things like financial stress. I didn’t take into consideration the struggles within the priesthood. I didn’t take into consideration some of the difficulties that my family’s gone through.
And so what happens with me happens to all of us when, when you were younger, we need to think about financial difficulty. We didn’t, we didn’t take into consideration the realities of relationships—right, marital difficulties—or for those of you who have children, the struggles that your children might go through, the seasons that you go through in your marriage, or the seasons you go through as a parent.
When it comes to the natural aging process, taking care of your parents or dealing with either the loss of life or the loss of both, just things that we lose in life. Like we don’t take those things into consideration. And so what happens is we find ourselves in life comparing where we are with what we thought was gonna be or where we think we should be. And there’s a fatigue that happens and we just settle.
We begin to provide for ourselves, and we think that life as we know it now is as good as it gets. So the last time I saw you, I was inviting you deeper into your heart. I was asking you to ask, “What are you really wanting to ask God for? The more that’s there…” But for a lot of us, we don’t ask God for more because we just don’t ask God for those types of things.
Some of us don’t ask God for it because we don’t really believe that He is gonna provide what we can provide for ourselves. Or some of us don’t ask God because either he hasn’t come through for us in the past with unmet expectations or unanswered prayer. Or we’ve been so conditioned because other people have it come through for us in the way that we thought that they should. And we just project that on to God.
And so what happens is when we ask God for more, we have our contingency plans—right—our backup plans if He doesn’t come through. That just adds to the fatigue. And what it does is it limits our receptivity to whatever God wants to give us. And we reach a point in life where get tired and we think that life as we know it now is as good as it gets.
[Music]
I think about the man in the gospel for the fourth Sunday of Lent—that the man born blind—and the best that he could do all day long is just beg. Every day he wakes up and he, the only thing he can do is just hope that what the scraps that people are gonna give him is gonna just be enough. And right, so he’s just settled. Life has just become one thing after another and he just thinks begging is as good as it gets. And Jesus brings healing to him.
And when the man born blind encounters Jesus, he can’t see—not only physically—but he can’t see interiorly what God’s gonna do for him. He has trust, literally. As Jesus asks them to go wash in the pool, he has to act on that and trust. And, of course, that’s where the healing is.
But I was drawn to the conversation that the man born blind has with Jesus right at the end of that story. Jesus engages him and He actually brings his entire heart to Jesus. And I think that’s where I would really encourage us to go.
It’s important for us to pay attention to what stirs in your heart when you hear about these dramatic stories of the gospel. What stirs in your heart when you hear a man was healed of his blindness or a woman was forgiven of her sin last week with the woman at the well? What’s there in your heart when you hear me ask you to ask for more?
It’s not only to pay attention to what stirs in our heart but where do we go with it? Did we just kind of ruminate inside our own hearts and think about that ourselves? Or are we taking that to God in conversation?
With the fatigue of the fourth week of Lent and with the fatigue of life, what’s in your heart? What do you really want? And where are you going with that? This week let’s take everything in our heart to Jesus in conversation with Jesus as we discover God with us asking us to ask for more.
Let’s trust that He is listening. Let’s trust that He wants it more than we do. Let’s bring our hearts to the Lord as He seeks to give us more.
God bless you.
[Music]
Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church 