GOD RECREATION OF INNOCENCE IN US




THURSDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT

Jer 17:5-10; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 16:19-31

The Reworking of Innocence in a Sinner

To appreciate the work of God’s grace in us, we must sometimes reflect on our human conditions without God. We have come to understand sin as a turning away from God, which plunges the human soul into darkness. The darkness is from the absence of the word of God, the light of our souls. Our self-deprivation of the inner light that enlightens every man that comes into life is the original curse we inherited from Adam and Eve. God did not curse our fore-parents but directed the curse to the earth on which they and their forebears will thrive. They already attracted the curse to themselves by turning away from the word God gave to them as their light and life. Death was the curse or penalty for turning away from the word of God that is life. God reiterated this understanding through the prophet Jeremiah. “A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands: if good comes, he has no eyes for it, he settles in the parched places of the wilderness, a salt land, uninhabited.” Jeremiah just enunciated the consequences that follow our turning away from God. A sinner lives in darkness, deprived of God’s life, which comes with his word, and is blind to good things in life because he lacks the spiritual light to comprehend them.

All these are consequences of turning away from the word of God. God’s infinite mercy and justice reduce the productivity of the land or permit physical evils to check our excesses in sin and call us back to the life and light that his word bestows. As we have reflected very often, God moderates every physical evil or affliction to achieve our conversion to him. If we duly cooperate with every grace and affliction he sends, he gradually reworks innocence in our souls. But it is a work that only God can achieve with our cooperation. The gift of free will to us makes the outcome probable. Jeremiah witnesses to this difficulty. “The heart is more devious than any other thing, perverse too: who can pierce its secrets? I, the Lord, search to the heart, I probe the loins, to give each man what his conduct and his actions deserve.” We were conceived, born, and groomed in the act and art of insincerity. It takes constant flooding with the grace of God and inundation with bodily and spiritual afflictions to bring us to humble ourselves and admit our nothingness before God. By the light of his word, he searches the depth of our hearts to uncover the innate insincerity in our motives; by physical and spiritual afflictions, he probes our loins and scrutinises our dedication to his divine will. Through this multifaceted and multilayered process, the Father reworks innocence in us.

We see an illustration of this process in the story of Lazarus and Dives given in the gospel. To appreciate the lesson from the story, we must understand that the abundance and scarcity of material goods are the same before God. He uses each to achieve his will in each of us. His infinite wisdom decides which is most appropriate for the work he intends to do in each of us. He employed material affluence on the rich man, Dives, and material scarcity on Lazarus, the poor man. But while Lazarus enjoys rich spiritual goods/virtues, Dives is bereft of them. In his infinite wisdom, God brought them together to trade so that from the excess of one, the needs of the other would be supplied or satisfied. Dives’ lack of cooperation with God’s grace made the exchange impossible; he refused and prevented God’s reworking of innocence in his soul. Abraham’s words reveal as much: “‘My son,’ Abraham replied ‘remember that during your life good things came your way, just as bad things came the way of Lazarus. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony.’” Our God does not deprive anyone of the needed graces each day. We remain barren and fruitless because we have not allowed God to open our spiritual eyes to see and understand the will of the Father.

Let us pray: O God, who delight in innocence and restore it, direct the hearts of your servants to yourself, that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit, we may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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