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April 4, 2019Today’s first reading begins with the Lord God urging Moses to "Go down at once to your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved. They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it.”
As the saying goes, it’s easier for the preacher “to get the people out of Egypt than to get Egypt out of the people.” Prior bad conditioning mediated through various habits, attitudes, and cravings is not easily shed. Yet, becoming a new creation in Christ involves precisely that and more. The spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil take many forms and quite often they hide behind socially acceptable masks within every human culture. And so we are seduced, and we aid the false gods by wanting to be seduced by their lies.
But we can renounce these false gods and return to the One who brought us out of the land of darkness when His own fire entered our hearts at baptism. Christ, our Light, is that Pillar of Fire by night who guides the way if we will but turn to the true source of our hearts’ longing. In this Lenten season, this season of renunciation and deliverance from the power of sin and error (“the two-fold darkness” as St. Thomas Aquinas refers to them), what idols are we willing to sacrifice in order to be free in Christ, in order to be whole and holy, wholly His?
One place is to look for the hidden, insidious enemy is to identify the sources of alienation in our lives. As Sr. Joan Delaplane, OP, would say “Anger, bitterness, and resentment are not fruits of the Holy Spirit!” Find those wounds that opportunistic spirits infest and aggravate like a deadly infection, and expose them to the healing Light of Christ, in whom abides the power for forgiving and for receiving forgiveness far beyond mortal strength. This is grace, and by grace are we saved.
