Brian Miller (Bj) is a husband, father, and student of the New Evangeliztion. He is the Youth Minister at Seven Holy Founders Parish and Music Minister at Fontbonne University as well as the bass player for the Pete Buncher band. He can be found on Twitter as @the_bj.
Sitting in a parish staff council meeting the other night our pastor opened in prayer as usual. The reading he used was a beautiful passage taken from 2 Corinthians 5.
There was one line that struck me and kind of kicked me back into Lent Mode.
We’ve all experienced Lent Mode at one time or another. It’s that time when you actually try to fast and pray.
That time when you can bring your faith into your everyday life and offer those little moments of trail to Jesus. That moment when all you want is that fast food you gave up for Lent, and you offer it up instead of focusing on how great you are for actually giving up something hard.
That’s Lent Mode. In the zone, living your faith the way you wish you could the rest of the year. (We should be in this type of mode all year!)
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” I’ve always struggled with this passage from 2 Corinthians 5:21. I’ve studied my fair share of theology and done lots of spiritual reading, but I’ve never been able to feel comfortable with the idea of God “making him to be sin.” That just seems so nuts to me and I end up getting stuck on that line until I give up or get distracted.
Of all the times I’ve read this passage I seem to miss the last line ”…that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” For some reason when I heard it proclaimed at the beginning of that meeting, I was reminded how simple Lent really is.
It really all comes down to being “in Him”. It’s our time to remind ourselves that throughout our day that we should be living, breathing, being in Him. And that’s all we’re called to do. Why do we make that so hard sometimes?
There a lot of other parts of being Catholic. The problem is that often times we get easily distracted by the stuff that’s supposed to lead us closer to God. We get more focused on going through the motions of our day-to-day or week-to-week “Catholic routine” and we forget to give our hearts to God.
I’m not recommending you give up on your Catholic routine–quite the opposite, actually. As you go through that routine, try focusing on the fact that it’s only in Him that we become righteous, it’s only in Him that we are truly born to eternal life. Your rosary can’t get you to heaven by itself, but only if you give your heart to the one who gave his life for you.
I love the Church. It gives us all the different liturgical seasons to continue to nudge us a little closer to God who is constantly revealing Himself to us.
So get into Lent Mode, and let your heart rest in the one who made you.
