Come, Let Us Return to the LORD

Come, Let Us Return to the LORD

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent

For it is love that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6

But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ Luke 18:13

Piety
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

Study
This passage struck me in the very first year of composing reflections for Your Daily Tripod.  And the Epiphany returns every time I read it.  The Cursillo method and our “Piety-Study-Action” tripod made its first appearance in the Hebrew Bible in Hosea, Chapter 6. 

Hosea's mission took place around 800 years before the birth of Christ.  During

this time, many in Israel had forgotten about the true God and worshipped idols. Hosea attempted to get them to return to the faith of their Fathers with his advice. 

The prophet also lived more than 2,500 years before Eduardo Bonin and his group reunion conceived of the Cursillo movement.  Yet right there in the passage that is our first reading today, we have the three pillars of our Cursillo tripod.  Six lines of the entire Bible nestled right here in the Book of Hosea. And in these six lines, we have the needle of our compass pointing to true north.

First, we get the invitation to the Cursillo weekend experience:

Come, let us return to the LORD, for it is he who has rent, but he will heal us; he has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. God wants us to live in His presence. He does not wish to banish us from the Garden. He does not want us to be outcast. He wants us back!

Second, we get a description of what happens on the Cursillo Weekend and into our Fourth Day:

He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence. Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD; as certain as the dawn is his coming, and his judgment shines forth like the light of day! He will come to us like the rain, like spring rain that waters the earth.

Finally, we discover God’s three desires for us to live in a right relationship with the Lord and our neighbors and strangers: 

Piety: “Your piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” God does not want temporary sacrifices. Instead, God wants us to strengthen our devotion to Him with a permanent presence, not a passing fad.

Study: In addition, the Lord wants us to get to know God better – “Knowledge of God rather than holocausts.” We do that through studying scripture, other sacred texts, and religious books. God wants us to get to know Him. He wants us to strive to know the Lord.

Action: Finally, God seeks our love and love expressed to our sisters and brothers in the world. “It is love that I desire, not sacrifice.” God wants us to serve the Lord and each other. He desires love. He desires action. He does not want our religion to be a big show. He wants us to express our love personally, honestly and privately.

Action
Almost everything I ever wanted to know about life I learned in photography class.

The Cursillo icon of the tripod usually has all three legs being equal in length. If the three legs are connected to a stool, then the stool will be more stable on the floor. However, photographers will tell you (and show you) that tripod legs usually adjustable. One never knows when you have to find stability on an uneven surface, on sand, or on a rocky hillside.  You can do this by making one leg shorter or longer than the others. Other times photographers must spread the tripod legs wide and vary their lengths in order to get close to the subject. In our Cursillo tripod, sometimes we rely more upon piety or study or action depending upon where we are in the journey.

When I teach at the at photojournalism workshops, new shooters would come in and proudly show off their equipment, especially long telephoto lenses that they could use at football games and other venues to try to get close up to the action. They would stand off at a distance and rely upon the power of the optical zoom to appear to get closer to the action. Most times, their early attempts to get sharp images were marred by camera shake and motion that they could not eliminate without the stability of a tripod. Such long lenses also were no substitute for getting in tight. “Appearing” to get close to the action is not like getting close to the action.

Today, we learn how God the Father and Jesus wants to get close to the ground with us today. Even if we stay off at a distance like the tax collector, God will invite us into a closer relationship. “The latter went home justified, not the former.” 

Do we behave like the tax collector when we enter Church? Do we sit in the back? Do we pray quietly? Do we sing softly? How does this behavior translate into our actions when we go forth to “love and serve the Lord and our sisters and brothers? Are we timid in our outreach? Are we shy about helping others? 

As we pass more than the halfway point of the Lenten journey to Easter, how are you doing with your plans for prayer, fasting, almsgiving?  The Lord's sacrifice will shower upon us all like the spring rain.  It will not veer off from the sinners.  It will cover all the living and all the dead.  It will cover all the saintly and all the flawed.  Although we may not be perfect (yet) or perfectly merciful, we have infinite opportunities to change the direction in which we look for happiness. 

Match your tax collector-inspired quiet piety, devoted study and active love that eastward springs.