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Yes, Mint Puff, this song is about you. And also about me. About each of us, who live our life floods and sail among the foaming waves towards reconciliation with God – saving ourselves and others. Maybe even saving all mankind if you look closely. This happens for sure when we defend something, something we want to protect, not only to satisfy our egoisms, when we decide to sacrifice, effort, danger, because we know that the stake is greater than personal comfort and pleasure. put your name here), swim and live, and drown who you were …
On the first Sunday of Lent, the liturgical readings of the Catholic Church remind us of the day when the flood waters receded and God made a covenant with all beings who came out of ark. It is good that the image of the rainbow unfolds before our eyes, announcing our safety and God’s constant care over our affairs. This strengthens us in our Christian hope, so much needed when we undertake difficult life tasks.
For now, however, each of us is likely to have a lot of extreme experiences. We are well acquainted with our floods, although for each of us they take a slightly different form. For one, it will be a necessity to live in a hostile environment that ignores its most important values. For someone else – falling into a whirlwind of murderous dehumanizing work or, on the contrary, forced inactivity and helplessness caused by a serious illness. Sometimes it can be a trip abroad that distracts one’s loved ones for a long time, or social marginalization, resulting, for example, from poverty or disability. As in life, the range of possibilities is virtually endless.
And God invites each of us to build an ark for ourselves and to survive the most difficult times in it. Why exactly you? Why me? “I don’t really know why I chose you,” God says to Noah in a song by the band Lao Che. Without big words and philosophical justifications, in a way that most closely matches the sensitivity of contemporary man, tainted with a sense of absurdity. Almost like in a simple children’s dialogue: “Why?” “Because yes and that’s it.” Yet such an unjustifiable, unselfish choice is a sign of purest love.
We Christians are in a privileged position: God’s choice was made clear to us at our baptism. This is reflected in today’s second reading, which teaches that the water of baptism saves us “not by washing the dirt of the body, but by asking God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And so that someone could one day say about you or about me: “a guy who sometimes tensed up, but believed and when he was walking on the dung, the stench did not bother him anymore”. We do not usually remember the latter aspect during solemn baptismal ceremonies, but it turns out to be extremely important and useful when we come to know the dirty, dark sides of reality. It is the power of baptism that prevents us from drowning in this swamp. We don’t have to get out of it ourselves by the hair, which, as you know, is doomed to failure. Like Noah, we were blessed with the grace to endure among frothy and murky waters.
It is known, however, that in order not to sink, you cannot carry too heavy ballast, which pulls even the most experienced swimmers under the water. Unfortunately, we forget about it, stubbornly burdening ourselves with various bad habits, false ideas, ambitions, unnecessary needs, safeguards that do not protect against anything, which is a significant threat … It happens that only our life floods purify and force us to reject everything that distanced us from meeting with God. Then our life utopias are drowning so that we may be saved, so that neither the most powerful waves of evil nor the overwhelming force of gravity interrupt us on the way to the kingdom of God.
Today we also read that after John’s baptism, Jesus was led out by the Spirit into the desert, where he stayed forty days, tempted by Satan. Facing human weaknesses and overcoming them, he strengthened himself and prepared himself for the great deeds he was about to accomplish. So let us remember, especially now in Lent, that we too have been offered the gift of the desert. So let’s turn off the TV, computer, telephone for a moment, forget about urgent matters to be dealt with yesterday and let us move out to even a small desert, to this strange place of loneliness and silence, where Satan, who constantly threatens us, meets with good angels who support us. There, in the desert, we can see what weighs us down and what we must throw overboard in order to continue safely towards the goal assigned to us by God.
Swim, swim (put your name here), swim and live, and drown it, who were you…
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