Fr P.A. Chacko, S.J.

‘Tear your hearts, not your garments!’ These four words of Prophet Joel (Joel 2:13) have encapsulated the Lenten message with their perennial importance. To sum up: tear your hearts, bare yourself before the Lord!

In other words, it is a hot-button call to every Christian today to be honest with oneself. It needs courage to walk an extra mile with Jesus even if it means dying to self in order to resurrect with the Nazarene. It needs humility to own up one’s having acted like a whitewashed sepulchre so that the prodigal be embraced by the waiting Father.

The publican beat his breast and he won God’s favour. The Pharisee censured the publican in God’s presence and he incurred God’s ire. In today’s world of rat race for power, honour and ladder-climbing, there is no time to look back to pay any attention to those left out of the margins. That is where we will have no remorse in dumping our aged parents in old age homes to fend for themselves. Or, treat one’s life partner like a housemaid. Me, myself and my own comfort! These matter most in a valueless world tempered with a remorseless conscience.

In a world of cut throat business, we get sucked into the vortex of rivalries, litigations, and underhand methods to survive or to whitewash our misdeeds, as it were. We may often do freelancing by employing methods of bribing even God. Fat donations to the church coffers. Or, a rare white horse to add to the Church’s glamour and as a noble deed of the donor. Or, we take detour routes by seeking recommendation of saints whom we placate with monetary or material benefits. Our hearts remain empty. Our garments shine in public. We take pride in the glare of our outfit. It doesn’t matter even if we act like clowns in God’s presence. What is more important is how we win adulations of the public at large. After all, the confessional is there even for repeat offenders! We take for granted the unending mercy of God even when we have considered His presence as the last priorityor the final resort!

During this lent, let us withdraw into our own sanctuary, that inner precinct which we keep only to ourselves. There, let each of us dare to face the mirror image of the very self and answer the questions: How far am I honest with myself? With this outfit of mine, can I face my God who sees me and knows me through and through? This God seeks transparency!

It is in that inner sanctum only I can find out if I have tilted the balance in my own favour. If I have neglected the needy or treated others as nobodies! Or, perhaps, I have kept mum when I could have spoken out for justice on behalf of the weak and the voiceless. Or, when I could have refrained from reaching out to that gratification money from the contractor, but I did not.

However mighty we may feel with our position as priest or pundit, politician or bureaucrat, however suffused we are with this worldly power and fame, in the eyes of our creator, these are but non-essentials. Because, this God vacated his own glorious seat of honour and heavenly glory, emptied Himself and took the form of a weak human being. He suffered humiliations and rejection from the priestly class of His day. He was censured by the pundits of the Mosaic Law. He was not up to the mark in following ‘liturgical’ prescriptions. He kept away from belonging to the priestly class. They would have wanted to stone Him to death. But, finally, they had Him crucified on concocted charges.

But, we forget all this when we do our routine display of the Way of the Cross. We think this annual trudging will wash away all our pharisaic practices of the year, all our murmurings about the daily crosses of life, all our ill treatment and hatred of others. We are ready to consume that bitter leaf cup potion once a year even as we harbour bitterness against our daughter-in-law or mother-in-law.

Many of us ecclesiastical pundits want to appear liturgically correct, but, when it comes to our social correctness, our conscience takes a holiday.We want to appear politically correct by resorting to sup with the devil and consort with covert operators. We hesitate to call a spade a spade. Out there, men and women call for ‘azadi, azadi’ (freedom, freedom), freedom from social exploitation, economic deprivation, religious fundamentalism, or destruction of the secular fabric of our constitution. But, we, thinking of ourselves as privileged people, have no time to open even a window to the distressed voices out there. ‘What will happen if we speak out? Will not the government cancel our FCRA?’, argued a religious head. Grabbing foreign funds for institutional support is more important than siding with the native voices against exploitative and unjust measures of the ruling powers. Our institutional powers first! Our safety a must! Then, if we have time, the rest!

‘When they trample the heads of the weak into the dust of the earth and force the lowly out of the way’ (Amos 1:7), either we join them or keep mum for the sake of convenience. Our tight-fisted and rosary-rolling fingers speak volumes before the public when we pay unjust wages to the kitchen staff in convents or church precincts. We think the Lord will wink away hearing our unconvincing justifications.

Let us not have the misfortune to hear the words of the Lord through the mouth of Prophet Jeremiah: “Woe to him who builds his house on wrong, his terraces on injustice” (Jer. 22:13).

Avoiding meat or fish, reducing alcohol intake or feeding a beggar can be just symbolic. As genuine Christians, we need to go beyond these peripheral acts by ironing out our relationship with the Lord and the neighbour, by behaving as a responsible family person and a genuine citizen, by owning up when we go wrong and walking a straight line even if it means an uphill Calvary climb.

“Each person is a gift, whether it be our neighbour or an anonymous pauper. Lent is a favourable season for opening the doors to all those in need and recognizing in them the face of Christ. When we close our heart to the gift of God’s word, we end up closing our heart to the gift of our brothers and sisters” said by Pope Francis.