Monday, February 19, 2007

I need a little... Lent

Day after tomorrow - Ash Wednesday. I'm feeling a little impatient, almost want to anticipate the start. As with Christmas, however, all liturgical milestones need to be honored in their own time and place and not shifted around a lot. I may start my Lent reading today, but that will be the extent of my anticipation.

Keith Green wrote a song a few years ago - more than twenty-five, now - that went something like this:
My eyes are dry,
My faith is old,
My heart is hard,
My prayers are cold -
And I know how
I ought to be -
alive to You, and dead to me.

That's how I'm feeling these days. All calloused over, toughened up. Insensitive. Complacent.

It's not a good place to be. I suppose my soul-house is like the analogy I warned my RCIA people of yesterday, as we talked about sin: mortal sins can be like a bomb blast, but venial sins can be like a termite infestation - eventually, if you haven't taken care of them, they'll cause the house to fall in on itself as surely as if there had been a bomb blast.

Two months since my last Confession - always an excuse not to go. I am a lazy slug. God deserves better from me, and I want better from myself.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down....

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