Today’s readings make an urgent and honest appeal to the hearers of the word of God. This appeal is to turn around, to come back, to turn away from a current pattern of behavior, to change, to make a u-turn, to repent.
"Yet even now," declares the LORD, "return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
Among the several meanings of the word return, we find this one, To revert to a former owner. A return unlike any other. Not a mere return to someone else; not even a return to ourselves, for it is a coming back to the One to whom we rightly belong. “Return to ME,” says the Lord.
These words bring back to memory the circumstances of the prodigal son, who carried his own self straight up to a pigpen. At that moment, where there could not have been a lower place to fall, the prodigal came to his senses and thought about two things. The first one was a course of action, to return. The second one was a mission, to return to his father. In the situation of the prodigal, as in ours, returning is intricately related to the father.
I remember a moment in my childhood when my younger brother and I were playing out in the street with other friends from our neighborhood. I remember seeing my brother stumble while running on the sidewalk across from our grandma’s house. His right wrist went straight down to a broken glass bottle lying on the sidewalk.
The very first thing my brother shouted was not “big brother, help me.” It was not “friends help me.” The very first word my brother shouted was “Papá.” I, the big and protective brother was close by. The friends with whom we were playing were close by. Yet, my little brother, in a moment of great pain and despair because of all the blood coming out of his wrist, did what any son knows to do best in such moments, he cried for help to Papá. Papá was quite a few feet away from all of us. We were out in the street and he was inside grandma’s house. So I grabbed my little brother’s wrist and squeezed it very hard. I told my little brother to calm down and hurried to our Papá.
My brother knew right there and then that the only one who could provide him with real succor was Papá. The only one who could provide him with real comfort was Papá. The only one that could give him real protection was Papá. My brother’s pain and fear outgrew him so rapidly and so greatly that my brother immediately sought the help of the only person he knew without the shadow of a doubt could help him. I couldn’t get him in a car and drive him to the hospital back then. That person was Papá. To him is to whom my little brother cried and our Papá is to whom I took him.
We usually don’t run to Papá when things are cool and easy. When we are playing out on the street and having fun. When we are going about our business and business happens to be OK. It’s when we stumble; when our backs are against the wall. You look right, nowhere to run. You look left, nowhere to run. It’s time to face the music. What to do then? What God is calling us to do today, that we come to our senses, like the prodigal, and return to him.
“Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” There are ways of returning to the Lord. Actually, there is a way of returning to the Lord. There are concrete signs that speak of our returning to Him who would receive us again. In these readings we hear of returning to God with fasting, weeping and mourning. These actions mean repentance.
On this Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, we cannot come back to God as if nothing had ever happened. “Rend your hearts and not your garments,” says the Lord. Weeping, fasting and mourning speak of pain and sorrow. It is really much more than saying “I’m sorry.”
Rending our hearts means going below the surface, going deep beneath the skin of our lives, examining our souls and exposing what we cannot hide before God in the first place. To rend our hearts and not our clothes demonstrate that our innermost being is shaken, moved to a degree where we need to cry “papa” because nobody else would respond like him. Nobody.
“Return to the LORD, your God,” says the prophet Joel. And here is clincher for us, “for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” Lent is a journey that for us may begin with pain and sorrow; with rending our hearts, with repentance and ashes, so that it may end in mercy and grace, in forgiveness and glory, and in joyous light. Amen.
