Lent: A Season of Grace and Transformation

          God created the world and all that is in it. At the end He also created Man (of course it includes woman as well), and He created him in His own image. But man disobeyed God and went astray from God due to sin. Time passed and then God sent his son Jesus Christ to reconcile man to God. And to fulfill this, Christ chose to suffer for whole humanity so that we are saved from the punishment. God is not punishing God, but compassionate God, but our sins keep us away from God and what greater punishment can be for a creature than to remain without seeing His creator, to remain away from the One for whom we are created!

            But the fact is that we are all weak human beings and fall astray from God, again and again. And God gives us opportunities to turn away from our sinful ways and return to God. The Season of Lent is among one of such opportunities. God says, even if your sins are red like crimson, you come to me with repentant heart and I will make you pure and white like snow. In other words, we can say that there is no boundary for God’s love and compassion. He loves us unconditionally, despite of our being weak and going away from Him again and again.

            Lent gives us the opportunity to retrospect and introspect into our lives and see where we stand, in how much deep waters we stand. He has given us the norms to live our lives – the Commandments. And as we know Jesus had summed up all the commandments into two great commandments viz. Love your God with all your might, with all your heart and with all your soul, and the second commandment also is similar viz. love your neighbour as yourself.  How simple! Only two commandments and we become worthy to live in His presence forever! We become suitable candidates for eternal life!

            But the story is the other way round. We even cannot obey or fulfill these two ‘simple’ commandments. Today the world is filled with many things that becomes hurdles for us in becoming God’s loving children. The consumerist attitude of the world poses before us a big threat. People are used as objects, just means to achieve selfish motives. People have become so indifferent to each other, that nobody actually has a feeling of concern for anybody. The corruption is at its peak. The weaker sex is ill-treated and mistreated. Women and girls are raped, children are abused, old people are ill-treated, and people have become so selfish that nobody no more thinks anything about others then themselves. People have become so self-oriented; forget about God, they don’t even bother about their own neighbours. Just pause for a moment and think, what is going to be the outcome of all this? Will you expect a good reward from the Almighty for all this? Certainly not. Then what’s the way?

            God is ever compassionate, and ever-ready to receive those who repent and decide to mend their ways. Lent is the time to examine ourselves, go within and try to see ourselves form the perspective of God. Nobody is perfect, nobody is saint, so wherever you are, start turning back to God. Lent gives us many ways in which we can examine ourselves and transform ourselves. This is an opportunity to make up the broken relationship with God. The spirit of sacrifice and charity will lead us to walk on the path that leads us towards God. The time spent in praying and fasting will become the precious moments of our experience of our closeness to our Creator. It will create an in-depth longing to be united with our God, our ultimate destiny. And mind you, God is always waiting for us to come back to Him, but during Lent He gives us special grace and strength to transform ourselves and change our lives. Just try to love others and love God whom you ought to. We owe our very existence to Him, so can we live without Him? He loves, waits and forgives... though we may turn away from Him and go against Him but He cannot because that’s His nature!!!

-  B. Johnson Maria