A call to return to God

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THIS is one of the important messages of the Lenten season. We are asked to return to God even if we feel we do not deserve to be received by him. God’s love is such that it can heal whatever wound we have both in body and soul. God’s love can even bring back the dead to life again.

This Lenten message is somehow articulated in the Book of Hosea where it says, “Return, O Israel, to the Lord thy God, for you have fallen down by your iniquity.” (14,2) And then it continues with this assurance from the Lord: “I will heal their breaches, I will love them freely, for my wrath is turned away from them.” (14,5)

We should not hesitate to respond to this invitation, trying our best to do our part of going through some sincere transformation by way of true repentance that is deep and heartfelt, and not just through some outward rituals or gestures.

Let’s take this Lenten season as an occasion to realize more deeply our need for continuing repentance and conversion and to cultivate an abiding spirit of Christian penance that does not take away our hope, joy and peace.

We have to understand that conversion is a continuing affair for all of us in this life. We can never say, if we have to follow by what our Christian faith tells us, that we are good enough as to need conversion no more. We are all sinners, St. John said. And even the just man, as the Bible said, falls seven times in a day.

Besides, it is this sense of continuing conversion that would really ensure us that whatever we do, whatever would happen to us, including our failures and defeats, would redound to what is truly good for the parties concerned and for everybody else in general.

That’s because conversion brings us and everything that we have done in life to a reconciliation with God, from whom we come and to whom we go. In this regard, we just have to cultivate the spirit and virtue of penance. It’s not to paint a dark world for ourselves. If we believe in God, we know that our life ought to be always bright and cheerful, and that everything, including our mistakes, can work out for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)

We cannot deny that we have weaknesses. And temptations are never lacking.  And in spite of our best efforts, we know that sooner or later we find ourselves falling into sin.

We need to know how to deal with these conditions. We need to find a way to derive some good from them, since if we have hope, some good can always be achieved from them.

The virtue of penance starts when we acknowledge these conditions about ourselves. We should be humble enough to accept this reality.

But the virtue of penance goes farther than that. It grows when we put up the necessary defenses against these enemies of our soul and wage a lifelong ascetical struggle. Yes, our life will be and should be a life of warfare, a war of peace and love that will also give us certain consolations in spite of the tension.

And for this penance to be a true virtue, it has to include an indomitable hope that can survive even in the worst of scenarios. In fact, this hope gets stronger the uglier also the warfare gets.

It’s a hope based on God’s never-sparing mercy. Some relevant words of St. Paul: “I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1,6) It would be good if these Pauline assurance forms the deep attitude we should have toward our fragile human condition.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com