If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Lent is not simply about improving ourselves in isolation from the world. At first, the imagery of the desert, the call to separate somewhat from the mundane and the secular, might lead us to believe that Lent was leading us toward more of a "God and me" approach to living the faith. Yet our stepping out of society is not meant to be the turning of our back on society. It is rather escaping a shipwreck and regaining of sure footing with which we can be of use to others who are in peril. In the desert we can come to recognize problems more clearly as the Lord himself understands them. We can then be moved to respond based on the Lord's own heart of mercy and according to the Lord's own passion to see hungry fed and the afflicted satisfied. Our response can be defined by his own wisdom where before fear constrained our point of view to a narrow desperation.
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Our good is tied up with the good of all others. God himself is not satisfy while one sheep still wanders afflicted and alone. We too are called to learn to be merciful, to see the good of the other as our own, to love as we ourselves desire to be loved. From the perspective of the world this makes it seem that blessedness or joy would be unattainable since the problems we face are so deeply entrenched in social institutions and in the hearts of men and women as to seem intractable. Are we asserting that it must all be fixed before light can finally rise in darkness?
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.
The Lord says that even on the parched land he will give us plenty. We can experience the renewal of our strength even while still in the desert. This happens we allow the Lord to make his priorities our own by his grace. It is not merely subjective, but rather concrete, as we engage in works of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. It is not necessary for these practices to reach their eventual goal of the restoration of all things before the become a blessing to us. Just by entering into them wholeheartedly we are united to the heart of God himself who already sees the fullness of that future day with clarity. Only by moving toward it with all of our hearts can we begin to taste the celebration in advance.
If you hold back your foot on the sabbath
from following your own pursuits on my holy day;
The sabbath is meant to be a preview of coming attractions. From the beginning the world was ordered toward a day when we would rest in the enjoyment of the Lord himself, together with our families, and with all mankind. The author of Hebrews reminds us, "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God" (see Hebrews 4:9). But we can taste it even now by concretely preferring it to our own pursuits.
He said to him, “Follow me.”
And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him.
Levi demonstrated clearly this decision to concretely choose the Lord instead of his own pursuits, the decision to turn from oppression, falsity, and malice, and toward the true light.
Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house,
and a large crowd of tax collectors
and others were at table with them.
We see that Levi already experienced the joy of conversion even before he himself had much of a chance to make amends for his formerly life, and well before he did anything to contribute to the mission of Jesus himself. Simply in virtue of his real and not simply imagined decision to follow Jesus he already had a taste of the heavenly banquet. Was he still surrounded by oppression and sin? Undoubtedly. But it posed no threat to him any longer. He could invite large crowds of tax collectors to draw near to Jesus himself without being contaminated by them, so they could find in Jesus what he himself had found in him.
“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.
I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”
Lent is a time when we acknowledge that we have in fact been putting our own pursuits before those things which would have been God's priorities for us. In this acknowledgement itself there is such potential for freedom and joy as to make any penance, burden, any yoke that we bear as a consequence of it to be easy and light. This is because the acknowledgement itself, when it is genuine, is the decision to place ourselves into hands of the Divine Physician, coupled with the knowledge that there is no better place for us to be.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul
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