Thursday of the Fifth Week of Lent

What a bold claim the Lord is making! "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM." "Ego Eimi" (I AM), is the title God gives to Moses at the burning bush. The Lord God shows Moses that he is the One who exists, who truly lives. Christ, the Word made flesh, who came into this world to save sinners and who came into this world to make us a new creation, is the same God who encountered Abram and Moses.

Just like Abraham and Moses, we cannot encounter Christ and remain the same. As we are sometimes reminded in the Old Testament, "No man can see my face and live." Every time we encounter and place ourselves before the presence of God, we die a little, but not without something new taking its place. The life of Abram dies with the making of a covenant and Abraham is born. With that covenant, God claims a people as his own, just as parents name their own child at their birth. That name signifies that the child belongs to his or her parents and the parents to that child.

To encounter Christ is to be changed, transformed, and to be reborn as a new creation. Lent is the time to die. It is the time to remove the veil of shame that covers our faces and come out of hiding into the light of his presence unabashedly and forever be changed.