Lent, Time of Grace

Christian spirituality tends to associate Lent  to penance, considering a period of purification waiting for the glorious day of Christ’s resurrection. But it really is just a moment of renunciation and mortification? The Christian tradition has often associated it  to a period of stay in the desert, meaning that recall the great events of salvation history, as the forty years’ of Israel’s exodus or the forty days of preparation  of Jesus for  his public ministry, both periods of trials and temptations. The penitential dimension is certainly true, but we need to rediscover it in a more hidden and more profound  dimension that of  the gift of a time of grace in which God reveals His love. It helps us to discover this dimension the prophet Hosea.

The time of divine love.

Hosea is known as the prophet of God, who reveals the feelings of the heart of God In OS 11.1 you can find the ideal center of his thought:

When Israel was a child, I had loved and out of Egypt I called my son …. For I taught Ephraim to walk by the hand …. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I was to them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks, and I bent down to feed them.

Here we find the feeling of fatherly love of God which bases its relationship with Israel. Hosea research in the past, especially in the age of Moses, the demonstration of this relationship, which is generous love by Yhwh and ingratitude on the part of Israel. The Lord loves his people, turned to him and designed a plan for it, he has done in stages: first it was revealed to him, handing him his holy name (Exodus 3:13-14), then led it out of the land of Egypt (Exodus 13-15), has entered into an eternal covenant with him (Ex. 19-20) finally gave him the gift of a land in which to live. Freedom was a prerequisite for entering into the covenant that God had in mind: to make of a mass of slaves real people.

Even the desert was an indispensable step to achieve maturation of Israel, the aridity of the land, the lack of food and water should have led the wandering people to trust and abandonment in God, who was marching to his head to do enter into a land where milk and honey were flowing.

God chose the route to this promised inheritance (Exodus 13:18) and was placed at the head of his people, to be his guide:

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light (Exodus 13:21).

In the desert of Sinai Yhwh would teach these men to worship Him (Exodus 3.17 s / / 5:1 ff), and in fact they receive the law and conclude an alliance which made  them the chosen people (Exodus 19-20). The sojourn in the desert, then, is a privileged age, because it is here that Israel is born and it is just that the positive sense: a period of sacred history, which marks the birth of God’s people, pass through dryness is a trial period, but always a time of glory for the Lord. During this journey in fact, took place the initiation of a new life in Israel, despite the fall of the young child begins to walk (Ex. 16; 17.1 to 3, 32). In the desert miss the security that the Jews had in the land of Egypt, so the crossing becomes the way of pure faith in the One who leads Israel. From the earliest stages of the Jews murmur against God for the lack of safety devices:

Perhaps because there were no graves in Egypt,He has   taken us to die in the desert … it’s better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness (Exodus 14:11).

We would have  died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, eat bread to the full; Instead we have dumped into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger (ES16, 2s): it is better for them a life of slavery, that an extraordinary life, entrusted to the care of God alone The desert reveals the heart of man, incapable of triumph to the test to which it is subjected, but is also the scene of the triumph of God’s mercy . If God left to die in the desert all those who are obstinate in their lack of faith (Deut. 1.34 to 36), but does not abandon his plan and draws good from evil. To the people who whispers gives miraculous food and water, if it is to punish it also gives the means of salvation, as the bronze serpent (Num. 21:9), because God always manifests his holiness and glory (Nm 20:13). This allows us to see not only in the desert or just the time of the infidelity of Israel, as the time of fidelity of our merciful God, who carries out his plan. The people have been put to the test, but only because they could  recognized that man does not live by bread alone, and the memory of that  disobedience becomes a call to conversion and faith in their Lord. (CONTINUED)

Laila Lucci,

Bible Teacher  and professor of Hebrew Bible and S. Writing at the ISSR Rimini is the author of several essays and books,  among whic are included:  Witnesses of the Risen.

Paths of Lucan pneumatology, Pazzini, Verucchio (RN) 2007

Commentary to exegetical-theological “Wisdom Books” in The Bible VVV, S. Paul, Cinisello Balsamo 2009;

Introduction, translation and commentary on Joel, S. Paul (NVAT), Alba 2011;

Introduction, translation and commentary on Amos, S. Paul (NVAT), Alba 2012