FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT
Every time I walk toward Communion on Sundays, I pray for
one thing: an understanding heart. Not only do I want to more fully understand
the mystery of our faith, of God’s greatest sacrifice for us, but I also desire
to strip my heart of the blindness I’ve created from my own sin and ignorance. Blindness,
to me, perfectly describes how we negatively affect our relationship with God
by failing to overcome the sin and downfalls of our human nature. Over time, it’s
easy for all of us to allow the small sins we make to be repeated. For example,
I make the same judgments I always make against certain people over again, I build
up my own “altered moral code”, I consistently praise worldly things for my
happiness instead of God, and in doing so, I create a blinded heart. This is
where we hinder our hearts from growing. We let them stay in states of
blindness, allowing sin to persist as we shut out our light, our God. The
importance of clarifying our hearts is seen in the first reading from 1 Samuel,
Chapter 16; for “not as man sees does God see/because man sees the appearance/but
the Lord looks into the heart.” As we concentrate this Lenten season to repent
our sins and make sacrifices to send up to the Lord, let us focus more on
clarifying our hearts and breaking the cycle of sin and ignorance that leads to
blindness. Let us not be like the
Pharisees John mentions in the Gospel who failed to see the work of Christ
(John 9: 1-41). Let us notice our sins and work to clear our hearts so we can
once again see Christ’s sacrifice and grow in a new light with Him.
Deirdre Harvey is a senior studying Nursing.
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