3rd Sunday of Lent 23.3.14 A patient life
There are many stories in the Gospels where someone is healed or delivered by Our Lord. We do not hear in detail what happens to these people in after years. We hope they stayed on course, for the long term.
Our Lord puts before us in today’s Gospel the longer term view we need to have. It is not enough just to be free of one demon at one time. The devil will make repeated attempts upon us. If we do not remain vigilant he will find some way of getting back into our lives.
God seeks to build up; the devil seeks to destroy. Unfortunately, therefore, the devil’s work is easier. It is much easier to confuse than instruct; much easier to derail a life than to build it on careful foundations. Easier to let a garden go to weeds than to make it produce flowers.
There are a lot of people whose lives are more like a wilderness than a garden.
God is all-powerful but if He is to help us He requires our cooperation, and that cooperation has to be continuous. To be protected from evil requires a willingness and continuous vigilance on our part against falling away.
This is hard for us, but manageable. It becomes almost easy if we get in the right groove.
God is a patient gardener. He waters the soil, digs up the weeds, checks on the plants. If we live in the orderly manner that He would teach us we will achieve salvation over a long period.
A long life can be a challenge to stay on course. We could fall away from the task, simply forgetting why we are here, where we are headed. On the other hand the longer our lives the more time we have to bear a harvest for God’s glory.
The devil will try anything he can to attack us, distract, or discourage us.
A large part of our defence against the wiles of the devil is simply to know what he is trying to do. One of the problems facing many people today is that they no longer believe there even is a devil. If you go swimming believing there are no sharks...what happens?
Temptations will come at us all our lives; but we see them as just that – temptations. We can overcome them once we know what they are.
We can see them off if we hold firm to the basic principles – the Commandments, the Sacraments. We build on rock, not sand.
We ask the Lord to keep us on track, for life. He will not leave us abandoned.
But we have to stay very close to Him. Just as we cannot leave a garden to grow itself so we cannot leave our spiritual life unattended. If we do it will turn to weeds very quickly.
But if we consciously seek to nurture our spiritual lives; carefully preserving the gifts we have received, seeking to improve upon them; weeding out the sins and the faults – then we greatly increase the likelihood of final perseverance.
God will bring forth the desired fruits from our lives if only we let Him. It is not so hard after all, but it is mighty easy to go wrong too.
We take the Lord’s warning from today’s Gospel as a call to renewed vigilance in pursuit of holiness.
Once we are on the right course lock on to it, and never deviate to right or left.
By the grace of God we shall be saved.
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