Lent has started. We have received ashes and are reminded of 40 days for prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Prayer is a time to sit and contemplate how God is in our lives. How do you listen and talk with God? Obviously, Mass and our other rituals are great opportunities to pray. I encourage you to not just say the words, but sink into them. Where do they take you? And maybe the more challenging part is to just sit and listen. What comes to you? No analyzing just sit with it. Embrace what comes to you. Let it transform you. You may find the idea of transformation scary or see it as suffering. This is good. This will guide you to fasting.
Traditionally we give up something for Lent. Typically coffee, chocolate, candy, TV, I’ll only check Facebook once a day. Well, may be twice, there could be something important. These are a good start, yet it’s only 40 days. Can you take it to a greater level? What if in your prayer you recognized a hurt or something that is a challenge? Could you fast from that? How or what would you need to do to transform the hurt/challenge to something you can love? This is what Jesus showed us as he was dying on the cross. He transformed an action to instill fear and control of the populous into an act of love. As Lent prepares us for Easter what will you transform?
Almsgiving becomes our way to begin anew. I would say for many people their going on mission became an unintentional act of almsgiving. They heard a call, from whatever medium, to going on mission (prayer). They unintentionally fasted from their everyday life to go through formation and preparation for the mission. Even the two weeks of mission was a fasting from their everyday life. Their time on mission was their time on the cross. They saw people of a different culture, different traditions, different foods, travel to places they knew little about. Yet, when they returned home, they saw things differently.
As for myself, I have been part of Partnership In Mission for almost 25 years. Yet, for the last year it is a Lenten time for me. A year ago I heard the call to step back from the Philippines mission and not go. There were unseen blessings in that. Covid-19 has kept me from returning to our mission sites. I deeply miss going to our mission sites. Yet, it was a time to fast. To look at other ways to do mission. The routine of mission has been broken. We have new ways we can do mission. We will return to our mission partners in time. We can’t be certain when. As I listen to the Facebook link below, I can almost be back in Charity Village. I can see the buildings and hear the familiar sounds of Mass lead by Bishop Crispin. The Oikos Sisters and others singing the songs and replies we have said before. In it I know it’s OK, we will continue. We will change, but that is the transformation we are called to do and to be people of action. Take time to sit in prayer, hear the call. What are you to change? How will your almsgiving be come action? This link is the link to the Mass of Dedication for the new dialysis center at Charity Village in Borongan, Philippines. Listen to it as prayer, stop doing other things, fast while you listen, and let your almsgiving become the action to change your world into an act of love to others. Perhaps that action will be to come on mission when we can return. Or just to proclaim the call to mission to others. Let’s continue to change the world and bring Christ into it.
Now we invite your thoughts. Please share in the comments section below. And while you’re here, continue on a virtual mission by reading more of our stories and reflections as we discover together how “We are Mission”.
We are Mission! 