Glimpses of Paradise in the Dark Night

This past week, the fifth in ordinary time, the Mass readings have gone there.

We get the breath of God and the fire of Satan. We get the devastation. We get the growth and then the loss of paradise.

We get the complex wandering in sin that we know will go on and on.

It is a fitting way to prepare for Lent.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a similar story in my life.

Each year, I wake up on Easter morning and open the window to the sun--and the son! So bright and shining!--and I feel renewed. This year will be different.

Then come the temptations.

The promise of fame and friendship causes me to veer off course and away from Him. The pursuit of knowledge of good and evil traps me in tighter and tighter circles that lead me to talk myself into or out of just about anything that is not healthy for me or others.

I argue online and in person about small matters and then, inexplicably, stay quiet when the opportunity arises to spread God’s love and wisdom.

My temptation is to become more and more tangled up in my pride. The secular world rewards self-congratulatory confessions of darkness without intent to change and sparkly, newfangled ways to worship me, myself, and I.

Following Jesus can be controversial and polarizing. It can get uncomfortable.

Far too often, I have, by my silence, agreed or, with a silver tongue, tread lightly past the occasions when I could speak up in His name boldly.

Shamefully, I have joined in on the billions of ways a person can spit at Jesus; cut his flesh and press the thorns harder down upon his skull.

The Church is always there, though.

In the larger sense, the love of Jesus is ever present, and He is always happy when I come back to him like an errant child.

Day by day, and week by week, then, real, physical doors are open.

The reconciliation lattice awaits. The act of contrition is sweeter than any applause.

I can begin. Again. Again. Again. Again.

I remind my children how beautiful that our faith is with the way it offers big sacraments--baptism, marriage, and confirmation--that are momentous and come with parties and punch, and also life-changing sacramental moments--the sacrifice of the Mass and the purification of reconciliation--that might be repeated, daily and weekly, in ordinary time.

And so, my friends, let’s see the painful course for what it is.

But know that He wants us in Paradise. We can catch brief glimpses of it, enough to bring us back to doing His work, if we practice the faith.