How is Lent going? Have you broken down on your Lenten penance?

You are probably getting this edition of the Cursillo Newsletter on the same week you hear the account of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman. She was stunned to think Jesus treated her with respect and mercy. Men in that time and even today in many Mid-Eastern countries do not talk to women in public let alone have an intimate conversation as the one between Jesus and the Samaritan (a woman and non-Jew). Difficult history between Jews and Samaritans made it easy for both groups to be hard-hearted, cold and apathetic: the opposite of Jesus’ attitude toward the woman and others.

The purpose of our Lenten penance is to develop hearts softened by an intense encounter with God that stretches us: to become warm and trusting as the Samaritan woman became in the presence of Jesus. Lenten penance is change a person makes intentionally. It’s hard because we are unaccustomed to it – like learning to tie our own shoes. We’re all thumbs.

You will fail every time if you undertake the penance, a right thing, for the wrong reason. We don’t enter the desert to prove to ourselves how independent or self-sufficient we are, but to learn that we are dependent AND that God is dependable, trustworthy. When we capitulate and leave the desert because it’s raw and hostile, we also give up the opportunity to have our stony heart transformed into an incubator suitable for the gestation of love. The desert experience, which is distressing, reminds us of our inadequacy.

Moses must have kept looking at the burning bush in the desert, not averting his eyes, long enough to realize that the bush was not being consumed by the fire: the burning bush was his eye-test. We don’t go into the desert to prove to God we love him. He already knows how true that is. We are the ones who don’t know the quality or quantity of our love for him, so we also don’t know the quality or quantity of His love for us. Mother Teresa of Calcutta once quipped: “You’ll never know that God’s love is all you need until God’s love is all you have.”

God eventually called Moses to a mission he would not choose for himself: to go face Pharaoh and convince him to let Israel go. Then he had the even harder task of convincing the Israelites that going into the desert was a good idea!

Whether Israelite or Cursillista, the desert is a place where we begin adoring something beyond ourselves so we can stop adoring ourselves. Happy Lent!

Fr. Dan Arnold
Diocesan Director