Ver­non Khelawan

The Lenten sea­son is mov­ing quick­ly by. To­day is the Fourth Sun­day of Lent–the mid­point of our Lenten jour­ney. Pre­vi­ous­ly it was re­ferred to as Laetare Sun­day. This there­fore, might be a good time to stop and eval­u­ate whether or not we have made any se­ri­ous progress in lift­ing our spir­i­tu­al life to greater heights.

Lent, as we Catholics know, is a sea­son of penance and spir­i­tu­al re­new­al, as we make the six-week jour­ney to East­er, and a quick glance at the litur­gy all through the pe­ri­od re­flects a con­stant plea to pu­ri­fy our souls.Whether Lent or not, God is al­ways ready to lis­ten to our prayers and our re­quests. But it is nev­er a one way street. And while most of us have ex­pe­ri­enced God's bound­less good­ness in some way or an­oth­er, we can­not make any arrange­ments with God. There is no quid pro quo with the Almighty. There is no "if you give me this, I'll give you that" with God.

Many Catholics who refuse to ac­cept that there is con­stant need for spir­i­tu­al up­lift­ment, con­tin­ue to live in their lit­tle bub­bles and in some cas­es their ivory tow­ers and take refuge in the fact that it is their cul­ture or part of their char­ac­ter.In his book In Con­ver­sa­tion with God (Vol 2), Fran­cis Fer­nan­dez writes, "It pleas­es Our Lord when we re­solve to im­prove our men­tal prayer each day of our lives–even on those oc­ca­sions when things re­quire more ef­fort, are dif­fi­cult, or when we feel arid.

He said if this was the ap­proach, then our lives would be con­tin­u­al­ly en­riched and strength­ened and added that prayer was a pow­er­ful lamp which throws light on our prob­lems, and which en­abled us to get to know peo­ple bet­ter and so help them on their in­di­vid­ual paths to Christ. He al­so wrote, "In prayer one speaks with God just as one con­vers­es with a friend–know­ing that he is present, al­ways at­ten­tive to what we are say­ing, lis­ten­ing to us and re­ply­ing. It is in such in­ti­mate con­ver­sa­tion as the one we are just now try­ing to have with God, that we throw open our soul to the Lord, to adore Him, to give Him thanks, to ask Him for help, to go more deeply–as the Apos­tles did–in­to the di­vine teach­ings."

Fer­nan­dez wrote that prayer should nev­er be im­per­son­al, anony­mous or dis­persed be­cause God, who has re­deemed each in­di­vid­ual, wants to main­tain a di­a­logue with each one. "At the end of one's life, sal­va­tion or con­dem­na­tion will de­pend on the per­son­al re­sponse of each one. Prayer ought to be the di­a­logue of a par­tic­u­lar per­son–one who has ideals, a job, friends, who has re­ceived spe­cif­ic graces from God–with his God."

So as Holy Week and East­er draw near­er, so do for­give­ness, mer­cy, com­pas­sion and a su­per­abun­dance of grace. A lit­tle while longer and the mys­tery of our sal­va­tion will be con­sum­mat­ed. "If at times we have been afraid of penance and atone­ment, we will be filled with courage at the thought of how short is the time in­volved and how great the re­ward, a prize en­tire­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to our own lit­tle ef­forts. So let us cheer­ful­ly fol­low Je­sus to Jerusalem, to Cal­vary, to the Cross," Fer­nan­dez wrote.

Ver­non Khelawan is the me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain, with of­fices at 31 In­de­pen­dence Square. Tele­phone: 623-7620.