Lenten reflection from Sr. Silvia Etim, HVM
Lent is the time where I focus on God and make a more concerted effort to put Him first in my life. I spend much time thinking and reflecting on my relationship with God. It’s a challenging time where I take a hard look in the mirror and identify where I can make changes – where my walk does not match my talk.
It is also a time for almsgiving, fasting and prayer. A time when we remember God’s great love for us in the person of Jesus Christ. This Lenten season, I invite us to explore on, “God is love” and how God invites each of us to love. St. Paul writes in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13:4-7):
Love is patient, love is kind;
love is not jealous or boastful,
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way,
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Our reflection should be on love that “believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). This is the love God has for each of us. This is the love Jesus expressed in his public ministry, on the road to Calvary and as he hung on the cross. We know that Jesus showed us how to love in a very chaotic time. The land where Jesus walked, taught, healed and preached was in many ways as it still is today. Jesus saw the most vulnerable in society abused and marginalized. In the midst of the Roman occupation, Jesus joined in the people’s struggles and invited them to turn to him: “all you who are weary and find life burdensome, come to me.” (Matthew 11:28)
Jesus showed us how to love in a very chaotic time.
Jesus was patient and forgiving even when the Roman soldiers were torturing him. He never retaliated. His consciousness was focused on his Abba, and he stayed connected to the love he grew up with from his parents, Mary and Joseph. Jesus never lost sight of his own goodness nor the goodness of those who crucified him. Jesus taught us how to love.
Let us begin this season with a prayerful heart, asking God to guide us on our journey. Let us open ourselves to the transformative power of Lent, allowing it to shape us into more loving, more compassionate beings. May we approach this time with humility, recognizing our own imperfections and the ways in which we have fallen short. May we seek forgiveness and extend it to others, allowing the grace of God to heal and transform us.
We are invited to spend time this Lent with Jesus. By coming to know him more intimately, we can love him more deeply and desire to be more like him in our daily lives. With and through a more intimate relationship with Christ, we can discern how to bring his truth and love into our broken and suffering world.
Sr. Sylvia teaches school in Abuja, Nigeria