{"id":13816,"date":"2024-02-16T15:42:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=13816"},"modified":"2024-02-16T15:42:56","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T20:42:56","slug":"listening-this-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/listening-this-lent\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening with the ear of our heart this Lent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"h422203-p1\" class=\"permalinkable\">Each year, as Lent begins, I can\u2019t help but remember a scene from Sunday Mass a few years back. A little boy sitting in the second pew with his grandmother pointed to the Stations of the Cross hanging nearby, specifically the ninth station, Jesus falls a third time. A look of confusion and concern came across his little face, and he furrowed his brow, trying to figure out what was going on in that scene. \u201cHe\u2019s crying. He\u2019s crying,\u201d he said, looking up at his grandma. Although most of us were focused on how adorable this little boy was, I found myself looking over my shoulder to see what he saw: Jesus on the ground, the weight of the cross on his shoulder, a Roman soldier towering over him. This is where our path will lead us in the days and weeks ahead.<\/p>\n<p id=\"h422203-p2\" class=\"permalinkable\">The road to Calvary over these 40 days will be marked by confusion and concern, sadness, and, yes, even moments of joy; not the passing happiness we think of when we hear that word but deep-seated internal joy, the kind that lives in our heart when we put our trust in Jesus. The stories that mark the path from here until Easter are powerful and familiar, sometimes so familiar they fail to move us, or, more accurately, we fail to be moved. We\u2019ve heard it all before. There\u2019s nothing new here. But God makes all things new, and the Scriptures are alive with the Spirit, who blows through the ancient texts to make a word, a phrase, a scene jump out at the exact moment we need it, if only we\u2019d settle down and listen, as St. Benedict taught, with the \u201cear of our heart.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"h422203-p3\" class=\"permalinkable\">We need reminders, someone or something to point out what we\u2019re missing. Lent is that reminder, affording us the time and space to go deeper, to sit with stories and let them speak to us as if for the first time. What is calling you to transformation? What speaks to your heart?<\/p>\n<p id=\"h422203-p4\" class=\"permalinkable\">On that Sunday morning in church years ago, an old man sat in the pew in front of the precocious little boy. Hunched with age, he was held up on one side by a younger man, his son, perhaps. The older man was dressed in a beautiful suit, his Sunday best. He stood for every prayer, even though he struggled to make even the slightest move, and his son patiently helped him up and down. It was a beautiful moment, this juxtaposition of young and old, boundless curiosity and fading youth, but with faith and grace swirling around both, around all. Taking in the scene that morning, I was moved by the reality of so many people from so many places with so many stories, all hungry for one thing: an encounter with the Divine. The same could be said of our Lenten journey.<\/p>\n<p id=\"h422203-p5\" class=\"permalinkable\">We walk this journey together, even if we think we are walking alone. Faith and grace binds us to each other and to our God, and that is the stuff of which pure joy is made. Begin down the path today, and, if you get sidetracked, dust yourself off and begin again, knowing that you have companions, seen and unseen, lifting you up, a Communion of Saints, in which we all get to stake our claim. Stop, look, listen. Joy is hiding in plain sight, even on the road to Calvary, even on the cross, because joy is not fleeting, joy is not a feeling, joy is the knowledge that we have been saved by Jesus Christ, who invites us to join him on The Way today, every day.<\/p>\n<p><em>This column appeared in the Feb. 15, 2024, issue of <a href=\"https:\/\/evangelist.org\/news\/2024\/feb\/14\/this-lent-find-the-joy-that-is-hiding-in-plain-sight\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Evangelist.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@jannerboy62?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Nick Fewings<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/brown-and-white-wooden-round-frame-mki48azlI2k?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Each year, as Lent begins, I can\u2019t help but remember a scene from Sunday Mass a few years back. A little boy sitting in the second pew with his grandmother [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13817,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[54,285,40,686,101],"class_list":["post-13816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-journey","tag-joy","tag-lent","tag-lenten-journey","tag-life-lines"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Listening with the ear of our heart this Lent &#8211; NSS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As we begin this Lenten journey, take the time to pause, to listen, and to remember that we walk this path together.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/listening-this-lent\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Listening with the ear of our heart this Lent &#8211; 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