Our Gospel reading from this
3rd Sunday of Lent (John 2:13-25) is about Jesus cleansing the
temple of the money changers and animals being sold for sacrifice. When someone is discerning a call to
religious life, there are often areas in her life that need to be cleared
out. A lot of times what
needs to be cleared out is fear.
I was ‘afraid’ when I was
discerning religious life. I
tended to be the type of person who needed security…needed to be totally sure
this was the right thing to do. It
was hard for me to step into the unknown. If I made the decision to enter, I wanted to be
assured that in 20 years I would still be happy. I often prayed, “God, why can’t you just ASSURE me
this?”
I think God must just laugh
or smile a lot when I pray things like that. The only guarantee God makes is that He will be with
me. God has made no promises that
just because I’m a Sister, my spiritual life is going to be wonderful all the
time or that my community is always going to be happily living with each other
with no conflict. It’s the times
when I’m afraid to take a step forward that I need to ask Jesus to, yes, get
out the whip, and help me drive this stuff out.
In our Gospel the disciples
recall the words from scripture as they reflect on this action of Jesus, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” I had to let my zeal for desiring
God overcome my fears about entering.
Fears and doubts are
inevitable but you cannot let them paralyze you.
No comments:
Post a Comment