The Fifth Sunday of Lent: 3/22/15

The Fifth Sunday of Lent: 3/22/15

I have here both a heart-shaped chocolate candy box plus a copy of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses.

First, the heart-shaped chocolate candy box. A lot of these were exchanged about a month ago on Valentine’s Day. We all know that the heart is a very powerful symbol in our culture. However, it has been a very powerful symbol for millennia, even extending back to the days of the Old Testament where the heart was considered as the center of life. Various biblical authors speak in various ways about the heart: they speak of “thoughts arising from the heart,” of “perverse designs proceeding from the heart,” of “opening one’s heart” to someone, of God “scrutinizing the heart,” of God “purifying the heart,” of God “giving his people new hearts,” and, in today’s first reading, of God “writing his law” on their hearts. Such beautiful and intimate images! Getting back to this heart-shaped chocolate candy box, though, rather than being filled with chocolate candies, this heart is empty. Similarly, though God has written his law on our hearts too, it’s so easy to erase that law of love as if it were chalk on a chalk board leaving our hearts empty.

Lent is an opportunity for us to not only let God write his law on our hearts, especially his law of love, but to also let him, in a sense, brand his law on our hearts, indelibly write his law on our hearts, so that it remains on our hearts permanently, so that his love is always there to guide us in everything.

Second, this copy of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. After Michelangelo’s “Pieta” and his “David,” this is the next most famous statue fashioned by him. If you look at this statue closely though, you notice something quite odd: Moses has two horns on his head. Why would the sculptor do that, put horns on Moses’ head? Well, the horns weren’t Michelangelo’s idea. They came from St. Jerome who translated the Bible from Greek into Latin around the year 400 AD. Jerome mistranslated the Hebrew word for “shining” or “glorified” in Exodus chapter 34 for the similarly-looking Hebrew word for “horned.” The line in that chapter meant to say that, because of Moses spending time with God, Moses’ face was shining or glorified, but because of Jerome’s mistake, the line in Jerome’s Bible states that Moses’ face was horned.

Now why am I saying all of this? Because I think that Moses is the patron saint of Lent. Moses’ heart wasn’t empty like this heart-shaped box. No, Moses’ heart was filled with the presence of God which is why his face shone like the sun. Lent is a time for us to exchange our empty hearts for ones that are filled, not filled with chocolate, but ones filled the presence of God so that our faces might radiate and reflect the presence of God, much like a mirror reflects the sun. But how can that be? How can our hearts become filled with God? How can our faces, how can we, better shine with the presence of the Lord? Simply put, it is by means of spending time with God as did Moses on Mount Sinai.

But how can one spend time with God like Moses did? Again, simply put, it is through the three traditional practices always associated with Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving or charity.

First, there is prayer. Prayer is time spent with God, but it doesn’t necessarily involve lots of rosaries or other formal prayer practices. Prayer can be as simple as trying to be grateful at every moment of the day.

Second, there is fasting. Fasting is giving something up not because it’s necessarily bad. Rather it is giving up something that is good, giving it up to remind ourselves, like with a string tied on a finger, of the greatest “good” of all, God and God’s love for us.

Third, there is almsgiving or charity. Almsgiving or sharing our goods with others is a way to remind ourselves of God’s charity toward us. By such charity or sharing, we not only remind ourselves of God’s own charity toward us, but we also experience the beauty of how God is so generous to us.

A heart-shaped chocolate candy box and a copy of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses. Though we are getting very close to the end of Lent and are quickly approaching its fulfillment at Easter, let’s use these last two weeks to fill our empty hearts with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, that is, with gratitude, with hunger for God, and with the beauty of experiencing God’s generosity toward us. Then our hearts will no longer be empty. Then our faces too, like Moses’, will shine with the presence of the Lord.