Forgetful

I'm hungry in a totally mundane way.

This is a good thing--I've never fasted before, but I figured I might as well see what it's like. It's interesting how you don't realize how lucky you are to be able to eat until you refrain from it. As the Easter Triduum begins, we step back to remember Christ's passion, death, and resurrection. He went without food. He was tempted, just like the rest of us. He suffered greater emotional, physical and spiritual agony than any of us will experience. And all of this for us? How lucky we are, and how undeserving!

But today, and in the entirety of the Lenten season, we allow ourselves a taste of the suffering He endured for our sake. Nothing we go through will ever compare to that, but it can help us understand.

America is a country of excess. So many of us never know what it is to be without. We've become so polluted by society's influence that all we do, it seems, is want want want and never give of ourselves in return. We've become blind and deaf to our own sin. The frightening thing, though, is that we don't care.

Christ came to save us. He took the sins of every single person across the generations on his shoulders, and set us free through His perfect sacrifice. Two millennia later, we behave as if He never came at all.

Thank God for Him. Thank God that we live. The burden has fallen to us now to be the light, and to remind so many that He has come.

I don't know how they do it. I don't know how anyone can be without Him. I used to know. I don't remember anymore.

For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world...