Withered fruit ... of repentance forgone
The Last Lent http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/the-last-lent.htm We have already made plans for the coming Summer, and for those of us with children, even before the first blossom of the lowly crocus breasts the waning snow we can, even from this distance, smell the seer wind of the Autumn as we make preparations for the school year to come. The Winter that we bid good riddance slowly recedes in a bitter determination to return. But this year we have finally come to terms with its defiance and we will be better prepared when it careens south from Canada to vindicate its passing. It is, however, now Lent, and we reflect on the Lent past and determine that this holy season will be better spent, more efficacious, in bringing us to sorrow for yet another year laden with sin. In our hearts we hear with a distant and yet distinct clarity the cry, the unsparing words, of Saint John the Baptist: “Progenies viperarum!” “Ye brood of vipers, who hath shewed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance. And think not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father.’ For I tell you that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham. For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit, shall be cut down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you in the water unto penance, but he that shall come after me, is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear; he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire. Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his floor and gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Saint Matthew 3.7-12 Chilling stuff ... and it lingers within us. We hear the clarion and our hearts, for the moment, are shaken, and we understand the serious work of Lent, this “acceptable time” given us again and again, and yet once more. But our affairs are pressing and there is much that obtrudes into our resolution to finally enter --- and this time without recall --- into penance, and through penance into holiness … even sanctity. We will do our best, and that failing, we will do better next Lent. This determination is admirable, but in the end it is lacking. The fruit of penance of which Saint John the Baptist spoke, was, for a time, stirred to life, but remained withering on the vine. Its fruit we will produce, and in abundance, next year ---after the Summer, after the Fall, after Winter … But this is a Lent like no other. For many of us, this will be our last Lent. How many we have known who, in the last year, had entered into their last Lent … and never knew it. We adorn their death with ephemeral flowers on their grave, as though to cover the truth that we have posthumously adorned our own passing this same time next year --- the time we set apart to produce the fruit of a penance that never came to be. It is time to repent of our sins and to turn back to God in all that we are and in all that we do. It is immensely true: “Now is the acceptable time”. Next year another will clothe our children, and tend our gardens and the sheaves of bills on our tables will go unpaid or fall to another. The one debt that will matter, and that will go unpaid because it was placed on the bottom of the bills, is the debt to God … that we would have paid next year. How many have left that debt unpaid on the table. 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