Can you just stay away from everything for about an hour today? Can you just sit before the Lord and gaze at him? Can you just keep your phone aside for a while and spend time in meditation? Can you stay still and away from the usual noise you would love to partake in? Meditation is the type of prayer that teaches us to reduce how much we speak and listen more to God, who always has something to tell us. It is true that we are hardly able to hear him because of the endless noise in and around us today. This contributes so much to why many of us are not able to control what they feed their minds on.
If we spend time in meditation, we can enhance the growth of our souls through wholesome thoughts that we are able to build in our conversation with the Lord. You may pick a bible passage, read it, and use it for your meditation. Read the passage slowly, ask God to guide you as you reflect on it, confront yourself with the question of how the passage applies to your life with God, pick out lessons from the passage and pray for the grace to apply those lessons to your life.
On another note, you may pray the rosary and use the mysteries to meditate on the life of Christ and the lessons he calls you to learn from his life. An overview of what many spiritual masters say about meditation and its gains include that it works in helping to build inner peace, introspection, and growth. Only if you try it and do it over and over again can you realize the good it offers. If you have not been doing it, begin it in this season.
Remind yourself of the 10 Commandments
We cannot navigate through life successfully without a good dose of discipline. We need to be guided by certain principles. Even when we have a situation of some who claim not to want to be guided by anything or that the choices they make are free, that itself is being guided by something. The ten commandments are a set of moral guides that God gave to his people, Israel. God knew that they needed these principles to live well in the relationship with him and with one another. The precepts were summarized in two by Jesus into the love of God and the love of neighbour.
This does not in any way cancel out the details of the ten commandments. On the other hand, putting the commandments in a sum helps to be reminded easily of the invitation to a responsible and cordial relationship with God and one’s neighbour. As a spiritual exercise for the Lenten season, calling the ten commandments to mind is a necessary help to keep the focus for which God gave them to his people. The purpose is so that those who know him and are called his people may live disciplined lives, which respect God and the neighbour, thus fostering peace, love, harmony, and development.
There are those who have turned their backs on the ten commandments, declaring other codes of conduct for themselves. Some have even said that the ten commandments are outdated. For the wise, these opinions do not really matter because, like God, who gave the commandments, the purpose of the commandments is ever valid. Therefore, it is wise for us never to forget these precepts. It is important to teach them to our children and children’s children.
Reflect on the precepts of the Church
A precept is a principle or guideline aimed at ordering a system. The Church also has precepts through which she guides her members and helps them to better fulfil the demands of being Christians after the heart of the Lord. The precepts of the Church do not eliminate the ten commandments, neither are they an option to the ten commandments. Rather, they help Christians who really follow what the Lord laid down to live as he commanded. For example, we can point to some precepts that the Lord himself laid down and attested to. Some of those very important precepts include “do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19, 1 Cor11:24-25), “go into the world, proclaim the good news” (Matt 28:19).
How about the precepts that emerged from the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15:28-29? Indeed, every precept of the Church is both biblical and historically traceable to the apostolic tradition in the early Church. Come to even think of it, with the array of heresies that the Church has encountered, why would it not propose precepts to guide the faithful? The precepts are as follows: 1) attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation, 2) go for the sacrament of reconciliation and confess your sins at least once a year, 3) receive the Eucharist at least once a year, 4) abstain from eating meat and observe the days of fasting established by the Church, 5) help provide for the material needs of the Church, 6) do not marry persons within forbidden degrees of kindred or otherwise prohibited by the Church and not to solemnize marriage at the prohibited times.
There may be just a few of us today who still hold these precepts dear, let alone keep them. This bracelet, therefore, calls that you remind yourself of those precepts. Check if you keep them. Ask why you do not keep them. Reconcile yourself with these guidelines of the Church, the Bride of Christ. Decide to keep them. They certainly help stay firm on the path laid down by the Lord.
Assist at daily Mass
The season of Lent ought to help us sharpen the eyes of our minds, that our hearts may not be dull of hearing how much God calls us to constant repentance. From the days of yore, one of the very simple but profound ways by which we are able to keep ourselves abreast of this opportunity which God gives us, is through our closeness to his word, shared in the community of faith and through sharing in his body and blood, the Holy Eucharist. This is Christ himself.
This is the strength of the Church. It is like the nerve that connects the entire body, transmitting the right signals and strengthening the vital functions. It is the reason for which the Church at every hour, at every minute, celebrates the Holy Mass, the earthly liturgy which is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. As one of the verses of the hymn, “The Day Thou Gavest Lord is Ended”, has it “The sun that bids us rest is waking, our brethren ‘neath the western sky. And hour by hour fresh lips are making, thy wondrous doings heard on high.” So it is that the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is offered every hour in the entire world. The fact of this Holy Sacrifice is self-evident. But in case there are still those who ask, scripture attests to the fact that the early Christians shared the word and broke the bread.
They followed the apostolic teaching and did it as the Lord laid down. (See 1 Cor 11: 23 – 26). However, it appears that this opportunity is not being put to optimum use today among us. Very few are those who make the effort to benefit from the grace of daily Holy Mass. As there may be a million reasons for not being able to assist at Mass, so should we be able to make the effort to receive the graces attached to this blessedness. That our hearts may be attached to the Lord, that he may prepare our souls for himself, let us make effort to assist at daily Holy Mass, especially in this season of Lent.
• Rev. Fr. Martin Badejo is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Oyo, Nigeria.
