Friday Reflection: The Combination of Penance and Love

In my years of being a Catholic, something I have come to know and appreciate is the is the traditional understanding of Friday's being a day of penance and prayer.  Certainly in the rhythm of the week it does us good to take a day and consider everything that has transpired in the previous several days.  Of course this consideration takes the form of action on our part--it is action that makes it penance.  We pray; we do alms; perhaps we fast or abstain from eating meat.  

I'd like to suggest a Friday penance to go along with whatever it is that you do already: Consider love in the context of making Friday special.  After all, the greatest love ever given was offered on a Friday long ago.  Not only are we to consider giving love, but I think it's important to see love from other directions. For example, it might be a fitting Friday penance to consider love as the action that we deserve.

Recently in the context of the sacrament of Penance a priest suggested that I consider the words of God the Father to Jesus at his Baptism by John: "This is my beloved..." The priest went on to tell me that I should take those words of God to his Son as though they were being said to me.  Yes, I have come and presented myself for the cleansing power of God and he says to me, "I am well pleased."

In my Friday penance I want to know love, to act on it, and to allow love to effect a change of some kind in me.  It may be that we may not believe that we need any kind of change, but something I've observed in the deep experience of life is that all encounter involves change.  I cannot apprehend any being without it touching me in a way that involves change on the level of my soul; that is, in the deepest recesses of my heart there is an encounter and an exchange.

To grasp love, to apprehend it and comprehend it, to open one's heart and life to love is to invite love to do as it wills.  The mother of our Lord said, "Be it done to me according to your will."  By her words she yielded, she surrendered, and she allowed love to act in such a way that we deem it to be the miracle of all miracles.

I pray that love happens to you this day... and I hope you pray that it happens to me too.  Love has the power to change the world.  The miracle is that will happen through us and to us.  Our penance will be that it changes us forever.

Comments

[CO]

Amen, DDW.