Fourth Sunday in Lent, IC 3:2,
I have had enough experience
in speaking to and offering counsel to people to know that, with the very best
of efforts and with all the skill and persuasiveness I can muster, unless a
person is disposed to listen and accept my words, I am wasting my time and my
words. There has to be, in other words, a receptivity
on the part of the listener for any good to come out of a verbal exercise. This
is something that parents with problem children have discovered too. Every
attempt at convincing a person who is on the wrong path will surely fail
without some means of entering into the heart and soul. Words readily fall on
deaf ears. The problem of how to ‘reach’ such persons is always the great
challenge for the counselor.
This difficulty in effective
communication for moral correction and change of ways is at the heart of the
human problem. God has already implanted in our nature a certain sense of right
and wrong and provided that guilt and shame accompany
wrongdoing. But these inborn advantages can be bypassed and conquered with
systematic conditioning so that, after a time, one no longer begins to feel
inwardly disturbed when he sins, and even–with consistent practice–his very
judgment about what is wrong begins to fade: the moral vision become beclouded
by repeated immoral acts. The heart become hardened in evil and the true
interior of a person becomes almost beyond reach. Such is the case of the
hardened criminal; and such is the case, although in earlier stages, of
children who have become morally desensitized through rock music, erotic
fantasies, and the benumbing effects of narcotic indulgence. Our Lord’s words
today are to the point: “people preferred darkness to light; everyone who does
wicked things hates the light so that his works might not be exposed.”
God is well familiar with
this problem, as evidence in the Scriptures testifies. The readings offered to
us today are a good example. I would like to recap the selection from second
book of Chronicles that tells this very story.
“In
those days, the princes, priests and people added infidelity to infidelity,
practicing abominations.. Often did the Lord send his
messengers (the prophets) to them.. But they mocked
the messengers of God and despised his warnings until the anger of the Lord
against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.”
Notice that: “there was no
remedy”. Wickedness had come to such a point that the people could not be
reached. God’s only recourse was punishment. I continue the passage:
“Their
enemies burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of
After enough war and
banishment and a lot of fervent prayer, God relented and restored them to their
homeland. But it took a terribly poignant experience of suffering to penetrate
a people who had been entrenched in their evil ways. God’s methods of touching
hardened hearts through pain and grief is effective. But what a statement of
our weakness it is that God must revert to these extreme means to have us convert
from evil! Without feeling the depths of misery, often there is no conversion.
Would that it were otherwise and we were more readily
disposed towards goodness and good influences. A lot has to do with upbringing,
of course, and much too with things beyond our scrutiny, such as the work of
evil spirits and a strong inclination to evil in a particular individual.
The methods of God may seems
extreme, and often have even caused some to doubt his utter goodness, until one
realizes that God has in mind the eternal salvation and life of the soul. “God
so loved the world that he gave His only Son.” God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn it but to save it.
How important it is for us to
keep our souls pliable to the divine will and to remain in God’s grace! The
Imitation of Christ in part 3, chapter two, contains a
prayer that God Himself would speak to the soul and give it supernatural life.
Not only must we keep from mortal sin–which is spiritual death–but we need to
cultivate that sensitivity to the voice of God and appreciation of His gifts
and His presence in our souls.
May God always be able to reach us through our conscience and may we always keep an open ear and open heart to the message of life, the Gospel, that is the precious fruit of our Lord’s saving mission.