In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Christ begins his ministry after undergoing temptation in the desert by saying, “repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that our Lord just wants us to be nice to people and let them live however they are living already. But he absolutely does not. He begins his ministry by telling us “repent.”
To repent is to turn back. In this case, to turn away from this world and turn back to the Father. To turn away from doing our own will and turn back to doing the Father’s will.
What is against the Father’s will? Division. Belonging to Paul or Apollos or Cephas or anyone other than Jesus Christ. Deceit. Using others for our own gain or pleasure. Taking advantage of the poor. Treating people in a way that does not respect their GOD GIVEN dignity. Murder. Theft. Adultery. Fornication. Destruction of our children. Domination of others. Rendering evil for evil and seeking vengeance.
And what is the Father’s will? Loving him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Trusting him like the centurion did when he said, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” Loving your neighbor as yourself. Loving your enemies. Doing good to those who hurt you. Caring for the sick, the injured. Being generous to the poor. Welcoming the stranger, because we too are strangers in a land that is not our own. Protecting those in your care from physical and spiritual dangers. Living upright and moral lives.
How do we do this? How do we repent? How do we turn back to the Father’s will?
Step 1: start listening to God. That means we have to stop talking. During our daily prayers, and even during our Masses, we have an incessant need to be active and take the initiative. But that’s backwards. There are moments in Mass where we are invited to participate, but what we do is so much less important than what God is doing. This fundamental misunderstanding of what’s going on drives so many of the fights we have over the liturgy. It drives so many of the fights within parishes. Whether you go to English Mass, to Latin Mass, to an Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy, or to a Syro-Malabar Qurbana, these are all the Eucharistic Liturgy given to us by God, and during which he transforms us. The Mass is not about us. It’s about God and what he wants to do in us.
Step 2: stop listening to this world. Yes, there is some good in this world, but our culture is so messed up. We are told all sorts of garbage and, frankly, stupid ideas on how to live our life. Almost everything in modern society has its foundation in enlightenment era ideals, and the men who promoted these ideals promoted them specifically because they were trying to denigrate religion and remove it from our daily lives. Since the dawn of humanity we have been religious. We have recognized our need for communion with other people. We have recognized that we must worship. We have asked questions like, “why am I here? what am I meant to do with my life? what is humanity’s purpose?” and recognized that these questions are much more important to us than figuring out that it will take 10 minutes for two trains to collide in a math problem.
We’d be better off if we delete social media and turn off the 24/7 cable news. The conspiracy theories and the hottest gossip about what’s going on the Vatican or Washington D.C. won’t get us to Heaven.
Let’s turn off the voices that aren’t God in our lives, including our own, and listen to what He wants to tell us.
That’s how we repent. And why do we repent?
The kingdom of Heaven is at hand. We have been called to join our God in making his kingdom present in this world. We have been called to dispel the darkness and shine his light into the world. We have been called to rescue his children, to renew them with the healing balm of his love, and to transform them–and ourselves–into the amazing human beings he created us to be.
Our savior teaches us, “Repent. For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”