Two Certainties in Life

Is Lent just some kind of business deal with God? Br Augustine finds out.

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Luke 9:22-25

The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:

Death and taxes are the two certainties in life, they say. The people of Israel were no stranger to both, in fact. They paid their taxes – tithes – by consecrating 10% of their produce to God, to honour the covenant they made with him (Num 18:21). They give God the best bits of their flocks and fields to thank him for having received all good things from him. Freely they give, and freely they give thanks. So it is with Lent. We consecrate 10% of the year (with some adjustment!) to God, to meet his generosity with our gratitude.

Moses sets the tone for Lent. He says, ‘Choose life.’ Now life or death does not seem like a real choice. Surely we’d have to choose life. But what makes even less sense is this. Moses tells us to choose life, but in the Gospel Jesus says, ‘Take up your cross.’ Is God demanding our life?

No. God is not a big bully of mercurial temperament who demands a show of gratitude. Lent is not an economic transaction in which God exacts concessions from the way we live. We don’t give up the things we like just to give in to this kind of false god. So don’t pat yourself on the back for beating yourself up – God wants neither! Whatever we give God – however little we think our offering is, like giving up chocolate on Friday evenings – God gives us back a hundredfold, a full measure, poured out onto our lap (Lk 6:38). ‘Prayer, fasting and vigils,’ says St Seraphim of Sarov, ‘are not the aim of our Christian life, but the indispensable means of attaining it. The true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.’ And when we choose life itself, what we’re doing is giving God our whole power of choice. God raises it up, and makes us more free. We become who God has made us to be. We become like Christ. ‘For freedom Christ has set us free’ (Gal 5:1).

But that means being raised up on the Cross. We will come face-to-face with death. In the coming days, we may feel searched and penetrated by the way our sins have wounded us. As we keep our penances, we will be reminded of our vulnerabilities, our proclivities, our weaknesses, drawn as we are to the lovely, created things that keep us far from God. This is what penance should remind us of – we are not defined by our fleeting, temporal, economic desires. Our need is greater. There is a hole in every human heart that only God can fill. And we realise, more and more sharply, that we cannot go to God by our own power.

So God comes to us. He knocks at the door. But God can come only where he is welcome. Over these 40 days the drama of all human life will play out. We’re already in it, but we’ve got to take our masks off, because Jesus says, ‘I have come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance’ (Lk 5:32). God cannot heal the saint I pretend to be. But he can heal the sinner I am. After all, these are the two certainties in life: the overhanging shadow of human weakness and disappointment, and God’s mercy.

Only one of these things endures forever.

Image: The brothers visiting Wolvercote Cemetery (Lawrence Lew OP, 2023)