February 24, 2022
Jesus tells His disciples and us today: If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. . . . And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off. . . . And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. . . . Better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, . . . “Everyone will be salted with fire. . . .Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.” Mk_9:41-50
Blessed are the poor in spirit; the Kingdom of heaven is theirs! Mt_5:3
In the midst of admonitions, today’s Scriptures offer us hope! Blessed are the poor! So what do we have to do, beloved, to become so blessed? Are we to give away all our possessions? Are we to cut out our eyes and hands and feet, which are all immersed in a world of sin? Are we to salt ourselves until we shrivel up and die of dehydration? No.
As usual Jesus gives us extremes to make a point. And the point is not about our limbs and possessions. It’s about – what’s possessing us. Does the world have us so possessed of itself that we can’t see or do anything but what it wants of us – our very souls? When we become filled with greed and selfishness, ownership, pride, anger, fear, hatred and judgment, and not compassion and trust and generosity and love, what happens is that those emotions actually have the ability to make us sick and kill us themselves. Blessed are the poor, because they have given up (by their own will, or the will of others) what the world says is wealth – its possessions.
So then, how do we let go, how do we escape those chains of the world’s possession of us? We do it one limb at a time. One eye at a time. One overeating at a time. One bad TV show, one news commentary, one sensationalized weather report, one smartphone, one curse, one fit of anger, one act of hatred – at a time! That’s why it may actually seem like we’re cutting off a limb. Those worldly limbs are, by now, so attached to us, that it may actually be quite painful. Welcome, beloved, to LENT. Time to get started! By the Grace of Jesus and the help of the Holy Spirit welcome to poverty and LIFE!
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Whispers to the Wind 