LEAVING… there is much leaving in a human life, we know it.
We leave our house for another as we want better accommodation.
We leave a means of transport choosing another more efficient one.
We leave perhaps our job having been offered a better salary somewhere else
We leave some old clothes, looking for more appropriate ones.
We leave, of course, this old software for a more up-to-date one.
It is hard to imagine the situation described by the 1st reading which shows Abram told plainly and simply: “Leave your country…” (Gn.12:1-4).
And for which country? He is not told, he only receives the promise that he will be shown where to go when the time comes.
Other promises are given to him but everything is expressed in the future tense…
Yet, when God stops speaking, the next sentence says: “Abram went as the Lord had told him.”
No doubting, no questioning, no hesitation – he leaves.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews will say: “It was by faith that Abraham set out… that he set out without knowing where he was going” (He.11:8).
We may leave… with difficulty perhaps, some old habits, some cherished customs.
We may leave… with hesitation probably, some traditions favoured by people around us.
We may leave… or do we? Our long-held beliefs, our pseudo-values…
But perhaps the ‘country’ we are to leave is our… ‘old self’ – the selfish, arrogant, narrow-minded self, the one needing to be transformed by the One who, himself, has been transfigured.
LENT time, a time of setting out, of moving, of LEAVING all that prevents us from being the person God meant us to be. Indeed!
ASH WEDNESDAY – Hearing the words we may think : Already? And we go on thinking silently… Lent is there… It means: sacrifices, depriving one self of this and that, a bit… morbid? Gloomy?