A Lenten Reflection: Repent and Reform

 

Repentance

Mark Trotter
You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet–Cycle "B"
C.S.S. Publishing, 1990

Repentance doesn’t mean going through life with your head down, feeling remorseful for being so bad. It means start doing something good. Start practicing what you believe in.

Repent means start doing the things that you know you should do. If you are alienated from somebody, be reconciled.

If you are self-righteous in relation to others, humble yourself.

If you have been uncaring toward the poor, now is the time to get some moral imagination and put yourself in the plight of another human being.

If you have been callous about prospects for peace in the world, now is the time for you to start praying and begin working for those things in your own neighborhood that make for peace.

If you have put your trust in the accumulation of things so that you are slave to a whole host of masters, now is the time for you to unload some of the stuff and to put your trust in God.

And if you assumed to this point that you are going to be judged on your ability to avoid evil in this life, this is the time for you to hear that you are going to be judged on your courage to do the good.

Repentance is not some negative, life-denying gesture. In fact, repentance doesn’t mean turning to a past way of thinking or doing at all. Repentance means turning to a new way. Repentance does not mean to change from what we are to what we were. It means to change from what we are to what we are going to be.
 


 

Reform:

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary…

To put or change into an improved form or condition…to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses…to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action…to induce or cause to abandon evil ways…to become changed for the better.

A message that is never out of season