A few years ago, I was attending a team meeting for work, one where our management team got everyone together to rally the troops and motivate us to perform better. We had a motivational speaker who was giving us a presentation. As I was listening, I noticed that my boss (who was sitting turned-somewhat sideways in the front row) was picking her nose – and not daintily, but very aggressively. As much as I didn’t want to look at her, I couldn’t help but to do so. I became so fixated on her actions that I had stopped listening to the speaker.
In today’s Gospel (Matthew 17:1-9), Peter experiences a similar situation. There he is with the Lord when the transfiguration suddenly occurs. A miracle is taking place right before his very eyes, and he is preoccupied with thinking of how he can make things better. He’s so fixated on his idea of what should be his appropriate response that he neglects to make an appropriate response – which would be to simply be present with the Lord in all his fullness and glory.
And it’s the same way with us. Each day, we get wrapped up in our daily routines, going through the motions, being preoccupied, fixated and obsessed with our own actions, agendas and desires – and we completely forget about being present with our God who is standing right beside us.
So how can we deepen our relationship with God this Lent? How can we become less obsessed with our own lives and become more focused on what God is doing in our lives? Simply with the three “R’s”: remember, repent, and repeat.
Remember: For many of us, we were brought up knowing God’s love from the very beginning with Bible stories read to us, praying with our parents before bed, dressing up for church and attending Religious Ed/CCD. We honestly can’t remember a time when we didn’t know God’s love. But back in those childhood days of faith, how would you describe your love for God? How about unqualified, without limit and unconditional? Our love for God was childlike and pure; it was as real as anything in life; it helped us go to sleep at night and face monsters under the bed. God was with us, and we were invisible at His side. Would that still be a fitting description today?
For those who discovered God’s love a little later in life, remember how your world turned upside down. We had a hunger and thirst for the things of God; we found His Spirit changing our attitudes and actions; we began accepting and loving people for whom we had no time before. It was a revolution of heart, soul, mind, and strength – and the best thing that ever happened to us. And we found ourselves loving God more and more each day.
That’s what we need to remember: how our lives changed when we first accepted Jesus Christ into our hearts. And then we need to pray that we always remember and are aware of God’s presence and love in our daily lives.
Repent: This means to change direction, change your mind, change your course, to turn around, to be transformed. Repentance is an acknowledgement of our own shortcomings and Christ’s sufficiency of His finished work on the cross to cover us and cloth us in His righteousness. It is reckoning ourselves dead, crucified with Christ, so we can rise again with him. To repent is to turn away from sin and cry out for a clean heart.
“Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion, blot out my offense. Wash me more and more from my guilt, and cleanse me from my sin. Create in me a clean heart, O God, put a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51)
So we must repent and follow our calling to live a holy life.
Repeat: Repeat those things we did in our early days of faith. Giving things up for Lent, doing things for Lent: setting aside money for the poor, volunteering, visiting the sick, pray… To repeat is to live simply, love deeply, get our faith off the shelf and out of our heads and get it back into our hands and feet, just like Jesus taught us.
Don’t get caught picking your nose! Lent is the perfect time for us to be transfigured: to become less obsessed with things that don’t really matter and to focus on what truly matters: deepening our relationship with the Lord. It’s time to remember, repent and repeat so that we can discover our Lord in a whole new way.
