Lenten Meditation: Original Sin IV
This is the fourth and final Lenten meditation on original sin. The previous meditations are posted here and here and here.
“Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost”
It is, as we suggested on Sunday, a rather powerful statement about the nature of human redemption. It appears in the Eucharistic gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent and may serve as our final word in this little series of reflections about the meaning and nature of original sin.
We are in the wilderness with Jesus. That makes all the difference in the world, all the difference in heaven and earth, we might say. In the earlier gospels of the Sundays in Lent, Jesus has been in the wilderness of our temptations, our sorrows and anxieties, our desolation and despair. It is as if we are more or less like on-lookers or spectators; somewhat passive in relation to what is unfolding before us and yet is something for us. We contemplate the theological aspect of the justifying righteousness of Christ for us.
On the First Sunday in Lent, he is in the wilderness alone, tempted by the devil, having been driven there by the Holy Ghost (and not in some sort of fancy chariot), and only after overcoming the threefold temptations is he attended by angels. On the Second Sunday in Lent, Jesus encounters the Canaanite woman, the non-Israelite, who serves to remind us of our sorrows and anxieties about our children and, even more, about the truth of God that is for all people. The encounter recalls at once the vocation of Israel as the holy people through whom “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” as well as suggesting the fulfillment of that vocation in Jesus Christ. Somehow, as this amazing woman senses, even “the little dogs” from outside of Israel are fed from “the crumbs which fall from their masters’ tables.” How much more are we fed from what is left-over from the wilderness banquet of God’s redeeming love!
The Third Sunday in Lent presents us with the dark picture of human desolation and emptiness when we have forgotten our desire for God. To be aware of our need for God is part of the message of original sin. To know that things are not right with us and our world and to know with a fall of our own hearts that “the heart is deceitful above all else” is part and parcel of the legacy of original sin. The good news is that such an awareness opens us out to God, to our desire for God and to the divine will which seeks our good. In this gospel, God is with us. It makes all the difference.