How do I see the sinful weaknesses I am personally focusing on this Lent? They have to do with desire and anxiousness. Both are rooted in my inability (unwillingness?) to trust God. Is that not the ultimate conversion?
I am duped by desire’s “promise” to fill me—and it will, I think, but only superficially and temporarily. What does Augustine say, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You”? Desire is more urgent in me and quite impatient with the contemplation of God and the story of God’s great love in Jesus Christ. That story is the story of present consolation challenged by delay until he comes again. “Already but not yet fully,” we, the Church, say. And I am not the only one groaning about that. All of creation is, all the brothers and sisters around me as well. Nonetheless, we, the Church, are tempted to change the capital “E” of the Blessed Eschaton into the small “e” of an eschaton of delusion in the here and now.
Resisting that temptation takes the discipline of a trusting pilgrim. Part of our Christian challenge is to wait while walking. There is celebration, yes, but not yet ecstasy. The great calming is on its way. If I do not trust God and God’s great plan for me and for all so clearly revealed in the Scriptures, I will—and do—let the immediacy of desire overshadow the delayed, but greater grace of the Eschaton at his return. I sin.
On my penitential way this Lent, I shall pray the Psalms of trust.
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