A MESSAGE FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
Darkness is a strange thing. It’s not something we can measure or
quantify, it has no substance or movement, and we cannot see it. All it is, really, is the absence of
something else, that something being Light.
In other words, the less light there is, the darker it gets. St. Paul exhorts us in today’s Epistle to
walk as children of light. This implies
therefore, that the less we do so, the more we walk as children of darkness.
Light and darkness are being used here by St.
Paul to denote good and evil. The Gospel
describes how evil can take a hold of someone to the point of demonic
possession. Voluntary possession, that
is, when a person invites the devil to take over his life and soul, is the
extreme form of “walking in darkness,” and although few of us may come into
contact with this phenomenon, it is, alas, all too common in this modern age of
greed and lust. For the more we give in
to the inordinate desires of our body, the further away from God we stray, and
the closer to hell we draw. The less
light, the more darkness.
Of course, there are many shades of twilight
between perfect good and perfect evil, between God and the devil, heaven and
hell. We all live in this twilight zone
between the two, and while God seeks us to draw us to the light through grace
and virtue, the devil is always hard at work, pulling us in the opposite
direction through temptation and sin.
We have, therefore, the most solemn duty not
to live our lives passively giving in to the natural and unnatural desires of
our fallen nature, but rather to struggle against them. Ours is a constant struggle against our
inclinations to walk into the darkness of sin.
Venial sins draw us down into the darkness, ultimately leading to mortal
sin that completely extinguishes in us the light of Christ, replacing it with a
darkness deeper than the blackest midnight, the domain of demons and damnation.
Our resolve must be clear in this
matter. If we just surf the waves of
life letting the current take us wherever, we will drown in the waters of sin
and lose our souls. If we fight temptation
and obey God’s commandments, we stand a
chance of saving our souls. But we
must persevere in this fight, never letting down our guard, and never, ever
allowing ourselves to grow weak in our obedience. Attend Mass every Sunday, confess your sins frequently, and don’t turn your
back on the great gift of grace that comes to us from frequent Communion. Walk as children of light.
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