Life, if The Lion King  is to be trusted, is       circular. If we think about habits in our lives, we will almost certainly see a trail of evidence pointing to either a vicious cycle or a virtuous cycle.  We do good, doing good bears good fruit; we build a good habit, doing good becomes easier; we do more good. If we do that enough times in enough areas of our lives, and we get just a little bit of luck, we will probably have a moderate level of success. We do bad, doing bad puts us behind the eight ball; we build a bad habit, doing bad becomes easier; we do more bad. If we do that enough times, we probably crash and burn, or we hit rock bottom, see the error of our ways, get help, and start all over. Life, seemingly,
is circular.
 
Lent, of course, is a great time to examine our habits to see where we fall in all of this. What  are our attachments, and how are they holding us back from the relationship with God that He wants to have with us? What might we do to die to those attachments and replace them with something better? But that’s only one part of    the picture, and the readings for this First Sunday of Lent point us to a core reality of the spiritual journey we are beginning. At the heart of Lent is something called “recapitulation,”    and it is the story of our redemption. Lent        begins with Genesis, the story of humanity,  and how it all went wrong. God made us for union: union with Him, with each other,   and with nature. We chose, instead, a disordered preoccupation with the self. Instead of adhering to God’s plan  in a spirit of trust, we chose to grab that which was not ours, and we see the consequences of  sin and death all around us.

We are journeying towards Easter, towards Christ’s triumph over death itself, restoring  humanity to the eternal life that God created us for to begin with. But first He has to go back and redo, or “recapitulate” what has been done. Mankind was sent into the world to live in  perfect obedience to the Father, and it didn’t pan out. So now God Himself is sent into the world to submit Himself, in perfect obedience, for the sake of erasing sin for which He is not personally responsible. He undoes the damage done by taking upon Himself our burden and suffering.
 
As we move through this season of Lent and strive to rid ourselves of attachments, it’s also worth remembering what Our Lord did for us so that we can cultivate within our hearts a spirit of gratitude. This is the kind of sacrifice that can never be repaid or forgotten, and it is chosen freely by Our Lord out of love for us. Just as we gratefully appreciate our family and friends who mean so much to us, even more should we strive to place Our Lord at the center of our lives, so that our love for Jesus might  motivate our every action and decision.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McC