"Bending Toward Justice"

Lent is often seen as a time of personal repentance and personal devotions. Those are good things. For those preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil though, it is a time of final preparation, of making ready in their hearts a place to receive the Risen Christ through the renewing and transforming living waters of baptism. We too, can focus on our baptism, remembering our call to be disciples proclaiming the gospel, doing works of prayer, fasting and alms-giving. 

In this wilderness of COVID-19 we accompany Jesus who walks with us -- sometimes carrying us,  who suffers with us, who rejoices in our successes, who loves us deeply and tenderly.  He whispers to us healing words, inviting words. "You are my beloved," he says. "I call you by name and I send you as my disciple."

At St Columba we know the call of discipleship implies something more than personal devotion and repentance. In the words of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." By opening ourselves to Jesus' invitation, we become his instruments of justice, his tools for  "bending toward justice" and helping to build the Beloved Community. It is that image of Christ on the Cross that speaks boldly and eloquently of that bending, bending toward God's will, bending away from white privilege, bending toward those who cry out, hungering and thirsting for justice-justice-justice.

This Lent, let us BE Christ to those in our bubble, to our neighbor and to the stranger. Let us linger longer in time of prayer, listening more intently. Let us take intentional time of self-care so that our "toolship" might better reflect the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the embodiment of the light of Christ. Let us ever more devotedly bend ourselves toward justice.
 

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Come and join us online for Sunday livestream of Mass at 10:30am. Also, join us for the various Lenten prayer opportunities and other activities.

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"All who remain in me and I in them will bear much fruit."
The idea of perseverance occurs often in the scriptures and is expressed in various ways. For example: “to keep the word” implies lasting and stubborn patience: “But as for that [seed] in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance” (Lk 8:15).When situations test us we face up to them by perseverance and persistence, by endurance, by keeping the word. Trials tend to make us turn back; they persuade us to lose heart. The direct opposite is not necessarily immediate victory; rather it is the endurance that enables us to stand firm and strong. John the evangelist uses a very simple verb: menein (“remain” or “abide”), which in context carries the same overtones. “If you abide in me,” Jesus says, “and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). “Abiding in Jesus” is the way to meet trials and tests.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Perseverance in Trials

  Carlo Maria Martini (1927–2012) was an Italian Jesuit and biblical scholar who served as archbishop of Milan from 1979
until his retirement in 2002. He was named a cardinal in 1983. Pope Francis has called Martini “a father for the whole Church.”