Second Monday of Lent
When I was in middle school, I was fortunate enough to spend most Easters at a cabin in Vermont with my family. One year, my mother discovered The Weston Priory, a nearby abbey of Benedictine Monks. Each Lent, I still remember the voices of the monks as they sang a song one of them had written about the prophet Hosea, who desperately and passionately wanted his wife back and treated her with love even though she had betrayed him. Hosea expresses an echo of the mercy God has for us:
Come back to me with all your heart
Don’t let fear keep us apart
…
Long have I waited for
Your coming home to me
And living deeply our new life
Don’t let fear keep us apart
…
Long have I waited for
Your coming home to me
And living deeply our new life
The readings today are first about God’s mercy. Like Hosea, the Lord is calling us and WANTS us badly, no matter how utterly undeserving we know we are, how bitterly unfaithful we have been and how wretched we feel. The reading from Deuteronomy and from Psalm 79 contain our confidence the Lord will show us mercy and we will be welcomed and consoled in His embrace: “We are shamefaced…for having sinned against you. But yours, O Lord, our God, are compassion and forgiveness!”
The readings today are also equally about how we are called to treat others in the light of God’s mercy. This can be summed up in two words: “Don’t Judge.”
“Don’t Judge” is the expression of the moment. It is typically said somewhat in jest after a personal revelation. The expression seems to have traction in our culture as response to all the negativity of judgment that surrounds us and as a response to a culture that demands conformity on the level of ideas and values, much less on the plane of the inane and superficial. And yet, more ominously, the popularity of “Don’t Judge!” is in part due to its role as standard bearer of secular culture’s critique of people who claim to know Truth. In these cases in particular, ‘Don’t Judge!” bespeaks a “judgment” that those who are trying to live faithful to the Lord’s call surely are “judgmental” of those who are not.
But the truth is, “Don’t Judge” is a core Christian value! Luke reports in today’s Gospel that Jesus directly tells the disciples: “Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”
This Lent, let us recommit to not judging ourselves or others, and to being merciful with each other as the Father always has been and ever shall be with us.
Sarah-Vaughan Brakman
Philosophy
Philosophy
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