‘Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them,’ says the prophet Hosea in today’s first reading (Hosea 14:9). In this season of Lent, though, we seem to focus on the practical rather than the intellectual side of things: as we have already said many times, it is about seeking to grow in love of Christ through our Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and works of mercy.Why do we do this, though? Why do we bother? Surely it is that he has first given us the gift of faith. By this gift we are able to see our God made man and hanging on the Cross for our sake on Good Friday, the mystery of our redemption by which we come to love him, for in it he shows us that he has loved us first (cf. 1 John 4:10).
Thus, at the heart of our Lenten practices, and indeed of our Christian lives as a whole, we must seek to nurture this precious gift of faith: for as we seek to deepen our understanding of the mysteries of our salvation, so we come to perceive more fully the depth of God’s love for us, and thus are drawn, by his grace, to love him with more and more of our mind, as of our heart (cf. Mark 12:30). This love incorporates both the practical and the intellectual – indeed, every human faculty – and if, like the scribe in today’s Gospel, we truly grasp the primacy of this, then to us too are Jesus’ words addressed: ‘you are not far from the kingdom of God’ (Mark 12:34).
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