Scripture:
Reflection:
If there is one thing all of us are pretty good at, it’s losing our way. We know that orienting our lives toward God and following Christ on the path of discipleship is the only true way to life, but inevitably—and, sadly, sometimes quite consistently—we try our luck with other paths no matter how many times they leave us sad and empty, disappointed and depleted, and surely less alive than we were before.
Lent is a season that is crafted with wayward souls in mind because the heart of the Lenten message is to turn to God that we might live. And it’s the message that pulsates in today’s first reading from the prophet Hosea. Like ourselves, the Israelites had once again wandered away from God in the endlessly misguided attempt to find security and strength, meaning and fulfillment, in something other than God, whether alliances with other nations like Assyria or their own frantic efforts (“the work of our hands”). Not surprisingly, rather than prospering, they have “collapsed through their guilt.” And yet, rather than giving up on them, God, like an anguished and abandoned lover, pleads for them to return, promising, “I will heal their defection, I will love them freely.” The passage overflows with images of renewal and restoration, of reconciliation and reunion. It really is as if the dead have come back to life.
Today’s gospel offers hope for the wayward as well. It’s the well-known gospel passage in which one of the scribes asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” and Jesus responds that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,” and we are to “love your neighbor as yourself.” We usually think of laws and commandments as repressive and restrictive, not liberating and life-giving, but in these two pithy commandments Jesus shows us the only absolutely trustworthy path to life.
So that’s it. Letting God love us and loving God in return, letting others love us and loving them in return. If we do those things well, people will be able to say of us, “That person really lived!”
Paul J. Wadell is Professor Emeritus of Theology and Religious Studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, and a member of the Passionist Family.