Litany of the Closed Heart
Dear Fellow Parishioners of Our Lady of Divine Providence Family,
A Blessed Lenten Season to you! As we continue to learn the wisdom of Christ by practicing discipline, we arm ourselves for the military campaign of Christian life. As stated in the Collect for the Mass of Ash Wednesday, we arm ourselves against evil by embracing fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. Our 40 days of penance and purification are modeled on the days of rain in the Noahic flood, the years Israel spent in the wilderness, the days that Moses and Elijah fasted, and the days that were consecrated by Jesus in His fast in the wilderness during His confrontation with the spirit of evil.
Our scripture readings today feature some of the most exciting moments in the Bible and really all of human history. God’s call to Abraham marks the revelation of God as the Spirit of Adventure. The transfiguration of Jesus reveals the ultimate potentiality of humanity when the call of the Spirit of Adventure is answered without hesitation or limit.
Lent is a privileged and sacred time to free ourselves from the limitations humanity has accepted, specifically, from the ways in which we have collaborated with the spirit of evil. These manifest themselves daily, if we pay attention, especially in the way in which we tend to prioritize our own experience, seeking comfort in the familiar and the expedient.
The more we open our hearts, the more we can answer the call of adventure, which summons us away from the comfortable and the familiar, and initiates us into the divine adventure of salvation. Jesus enters into human history in order to bind the strong man, to overthrow the prince of darkness—the ruler of this world—and to bring the kingdom of heaven into our hearts. Let us open our hearts to receive that kingdom, and free ourselves from the tyranny of needing comfort, of seeking popularity, and of grasping power, that is, being interested in politics, power dynamics, and struggles. These are modern versions of the three temptations Jesus overcame in the desert. We can become free by opening our hearts, by accepting the limitations of our humanity, and at the same time, answering the call to adventure. Then our humanity can be transfigured.
Below is the Litany of the Closed Heart. I would encourage you to read it, to pray it, and to find freedom in the opening of your heart.
Jesus told His disciples not to mention the transfiguration until after the resurrection. Only by passing through the crucifixion can we be transformed and transfigured. Let us unite ourselves to the Cross, fixing our eyes on the crucifix. Please consider these words from the late Pope Francis, offered during Lenten meditations several years ago:
The image of Jesus crucified reveals the mystery of the death of the Son of God as the supreme act of love, the source of life and salvation for humanity of all times. In his wounds we have been healed. How do I look at the crucifix? Like a work of art, to see if it is beautiful or not beautiful? Or do I look inside, within the wounds of Jesus, to his heart? Do I look at the mystery of God destroyed unto death, like a slave, like a criminal? The devil, Satan – as Jesus says to Peter – tempts us… It is of the bad spirit, it is of the devil to distance ourselves from the cross, from the cross of Jesus. It is not just a matter of bearing the daily tribulations with patience, but of bearing with faith and responsibility that part of the effort and that part of suffering that the struggle against evil entails… Thus the task of ‘taking up the cross’ becomes participating with Christ in the salvation of the world.
