Father Christopher Zugger

Why 40 days? Forty always signified that something big was coming, a change. 40 days of the great flood – the human race started over. 40 days of Moses on Mount Sinai, alone with the Lord. 40 years of wandering in Sinai – the adults who left Egypt and doubted  God died and the new Israelite people entered the promised land. 40 days of Elijah traveling from the wrath of Jezebel to Mount Horeb to meet God. 40 days of fasting in the wilderness – Jesus began his public ministry. Forty was always a time for testing, for growing in faith, for trusting in God and His merciful providence in a new way.   

In these examples of forty – the people involved didn’t sit on a rock somewhere. They were in motion physically, going somewhere. They were in motion spiritually, having to put all their trust and confidence in the care of Almighty God. They were in battles – Noah and his family against fear, the Israelites against idolatry, Elijah against despair and Jesus was up against the devil himself.

We are on a journey every Lent – fighting idolatry of different passions, fighting against the forces of secular darkness or despair that offers little beyond here, fighting against idolatry from using crystals or astrology to the idolatry of money and success, and in all those battles we really are up against the devil himself. Satan knows our particular weaknesses, and uses those to tempt us away from God’s love and his constant, great, abundant mercy.

In the reading for Pure Monday for the sixth hour today from Isaiah, chapter 1, we read this:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;     remove the evil of your doings    from before my eyes; cease to do evil, ¹⁷     learn to do good; seek justice,     rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan,     plead for the widow.

God is calling on the Israelites to transform their wicked and corrupted society, a society which still worshipped in the Temple but had abandoned the authentic practices of the Law which called the people to ongoing conversion, justice, and favoring the needs of the poor. The same holds true for us – we have to be alert, attuned to conversion, and focused on digging out our individual sins. When we dig out those sins, we have to replace them with their opposites, and in so doing we become the leaven that can transform the world around us. Our duty as Catholic Christians is to bring the world forward, to recall society to its original goals of building the Kingdom of God, and in particular to defend those at risk – the unborn, the poor, the unwanted, the dying, and anyone who is being persecuted. Christ died on the Cross to save the entire human race, not those who society says is supposedly deserving. Tonight, we are anointed to go forward into the 40 days of Lent and then Holy Week so as to be transformed by God’s enormous graces. With Him, all things are possible – without Him, nothing will change. Christ is among us.