Love Unites and Gathers
Fr. Adrian Burke, OSB
Thursday, March 6, 2025
“...we urge the entire community during these days of Lent is to keep its life most pure...by refusing to indulge in evil habits...”
Rule of Saint Benedict 49.2;4
Well, it’s Lent again. The monks are “urged” by Saint Benedict, the author of our monastic rule of life, to make the most of Lent by intensifying our prayer (salting it with tears), by cultivating compunction of heart and practicing self-denial. To me, the liturgical season of Lent is also a disposition of heart—which is why Benedict writes that life ought to be a continuous Lent.
Refusing to indulge evil habits sums it up for me. If doing good is about loving our neighbor, seeking to build up others and unite the divided, then doing evil is about dividing what God wants to unite, and scattering, as Jesus says in the gospel (Mt. 12:30), what he has come to gather.
Lent is a time to examine one’s life and ask hard questions; questions like, How have I been “scattering;” How have I contributed to division and brought discord into the community; How have I failed to surrender my own ego centered need to be “right,” to get “even,” to “have it my way?” These questions touch on areas where I have failed in self-denial, where I have preferred evil instead of the “unitive principle” of charity.
Evil divides and scatters while love unites and gathers. We all have a choice to make, which do I prefer? With God’s grace, the activity of the Spirit working on us from within and among us, we can choose the “good” over the “self.” For the Christian, this is imperative for, as Jesus also says in the gospel, “If you would be my disciple, you much deny (renounce) yourself, take up your cross and follow in my steps”...and in Luke’s gospel he adds, ‘daily.’
Every day, then, we are given ample opportunity for self-denial, to exercise discipleship and follow in the steps of Jesus. May this season of intensified prayer and compunction-of-heart aid us in honing our ability to perceive opportunities for doing good, for gathering what is scattered, and for uniting the divided!