It’s late in Lent, and that’s OK. It feels like I need the time and the grace that goes with it. The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah saw God as a patient potter, purposeful as he molds his creations.
Yet, O LORD, you are our Father;
we are the clay, and are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand (Isaiah 64:8).
In this home stretch — as we approach Holy Week — God is still working and reworking us, and we try our best to be docile and pliable. We went into Ash Wednesday with good intentions, and perhaps we stumbled, and then we got up again; and we still repeat the cycle. “And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” (Jeremiah 18:4).
It is a mercy to live as you and I do. It is a mercy to have the traditions we have received from the apostles through the saints. It is a mercy that we can go often to the sacrament of confession. It is a mercy that we can live Lent and Holy Week together every year.
God never tires of forgiving us; it’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.
So let’s not tire as we head into the home stretch of our Lent, and as we enter Holy Week and the Triduum. God will give us the grace to finish well, even if we’ve stumbled often.
Why? Because that’s his purpose throughout the story we’re remembering this month. He came to save us — save us from our sins! But that’s just a prelude. He forgives our sins and heals us so that we can live a life that’s divine, sharing his own nature with us even as he shares ours (see 2 Peter 1:4).
Lent is the time when the potter takes his clay and works it into another vessel — a vessel of honor and of divinity — a vessel of holiness and grace. God created us to be saints; and when we fell he called us again to be saints. Only saints will live in heaven; and you and I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in.
Lent has been forming us for the task — molding clay into lamps — molding sinners into saints. As the month ends, we’ll have so many reasons to celebrate God’s mercy.
