The Autonomous Christian

I have been doing a lot of thinking in the past about what I have discovered is actually a thing – the Benedict Option, a term perhaps first coined by Rod Dreher,  In essence it is the idea that Christians need to follow the lead of St. Benedict of Nursia and find ways of living in community that will foster the growth and development of a deeper Christian character and culture.  It comes out of the conviction that we are facing a culture that is increasingly hostile to the exercise robust, orthodox Christian belief and practice.

At the same time, much of the Church is becoming ever more accommodating to the culture.  In our efforts to reach out and attract people to Christian faith, we have soft-peddled much of the doctrine of the Church that is Unattractive to the convictions of the Zeitgeist.

St. Benedict saw a pagan culture hostile to Christian belief and practice and did two things.  He, with a community of others, withdrew to live their life of prayer, teaching and devotion that fostered the growth of Christian virtue.  And he and that community served the pagan culture around them in acts of charity and mercy.

Withdraw to grow in virtue as a community and engage in works of charity (in the Latin caritas sense of that word).  This is a much more radical expression of Christian faith than what we have understood to be Church in the West in the past 50 or more years.  It is radical because this kind of community necessarily means giving up some of our autonomy.  And radical autonomy is just one of the aspects of the current culture that has infected the church.

Let me think about that autonomy in the sense of making career decisions.  As an autonomous secularist I think about a job offer and decide if I want to take it.  As a Christian I “prayerfully consider” the option and then make my decision.  I am wondering, in practice, what is the difference between the secularist and the Christian in the above example.  One is impious and one pious but each reaches his own conclusion autonomously because, after all, what job I take is nobody’s business but my own.  That may be true for the secularist but it is not for the Christian.  Are you uncomfortable yet?  I am.

A number of months ago I was in that very situation.  A job offer came to me unexpectedly. I wasn’t even looking for a job.  I “prayerfully considered” it but I also did something else.  I sought the counsel and direction of the community to which I am subject.  In conversation with close brothers and sisters in the faith as well as with my Bishop and the council of Canons of our diocese of which I am part, I looked for discernment.

Now here is what was remarkable about this.   First, I freely gave myself to this process of discernment and (I think) was quite willing to be subject to any direction that might come out of this.  Part of the reason for this is that these are people I trust (one definition of community, if you think about it) but another part is because I am subject to the Church. 

Second, no one took this as an opportunity to tell me what to do or to get me to follow his or her agenda.  (It in not always only the Lord who “has a wonderful plan for my life.)  This was a process of mutual submission out of reverence for Christ.   The truth is, as a servant of Christ, what job I take is, in fact, the business of people other than me.

I am not here proposing some sick authoritarian Church community organization that has more to do with controlling people than seeing them fulfilling God’s purpose for them in their generation.  There is plenty of that.  That is authority and submission enforced.  I am talking about something freely chosen.  I was under no obligation to seek the counsel of any of these people.  I would certainly be under the obligation to inform my Bishop of any decision I had taken.  Informing and seeking direction are two very different things.

We all of us knew that, in the end, I was responsible for my decision, that whatever counsel or direction given I would do the choosing and reap the fruit, good or bad, of that decision.  That never goes away.  We all remain accountable for our individual decisions.  But as Christians we discern decisions in community – not decisions as to what socks to wear today, but the big ones.

What I am proposing for radical community of discernment and for growth in virtue is open to abuses of power and authority.  And it will always be because we are sinners.  But the “nobody’s business but my own” Christian model, where church community means shaking hands at coffee hour* has not produced the kind of Christian character which is needed for Christians today.  And it isn’t going to.

*This may be a simplistic and even uncharitable depiction of the Church in North America but as a whole I think we are shallow believers who are unlikely to remain constant in the faith if it gets uncomfortable.  Please note I use the pronoun “we”.  I take myself to be part of this failure. 

God as He is

This is adapted from a sermon I preached on Trinity Sunday this year.  Many thanks to Josh Pothen for his service as scribe.

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Trinity Sunday.  The lessons appointed for today include some of the most familiar passages of the scriptures from Isaiah, chapter 6 to John, chapter 3.  This latter includes the often quoted text that begins, “For God so loved the world…”

Some years ago while I was pastoring a church in Montreal, we used a service that provided formatted copies of the lessons of the day for insertion into bulletins.  One Trinity Sunday there was a typo in the John text for today.  It read as follows: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him might not parish but have eternal life.”  That’s parish, P A R I S H not perish, P E R I S H.  The typo brings into relief a thought that is worth considering.  That God send Jesus that we might not parish (or do church) but have eternal life.  I will come back to this.

Today is Trinity Sunday, and it is the Sunday of the year that we are asked to, whether we like it or not, deal with the reality of God as Trinity.

It's a day that we remember and celebrate the fullness of God revealed (and that's exactly the right word) to us by Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the day we stop and realize that we know and understand God not as we would like him to be, nor as we understand him (for a fully comprehensible God would be no God at all), but God as He is: 

Trinity. Three Persons. One God. Mysterious. Ineffable. Majestic. Loving. Powerful. And terrible, as in, causing terror.

I want to look at Isaiah's encounter with God as He is: in His majesty, in His awesomeness and in his terribleness. Awe is this sense of overwhelming otherness that we miss so often as we live in our relationship with God.

But this is what happens to Isaiah in Isaiah 6:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!" And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.

The faith that we are called to, that Jesus brings us into through His cross and sacrifice for us, is a faith that brings us into relationship with this God. The sort of God whose train fills the temple, whose presence makes mountains smoke. Even the voice of the seraphim--who are not even God, they're just holy--their voices make the threshold shake.  Isaiah encounters the real, the true, the living God.

When we come into relationship with God as He is--the Father, through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit--we see the Lord. And what changes us in His presence is that we actually have a vision of God. Now I don't necessarily mean vision vision, like falling into a trance and seeing a picture (although that can happen. Look it up. It happened to Peter – Acts 10:10). But we have a fresh unveiling, a fresh revelation of the fullness, the presence, the might, the glory of God. And it changes us. 

It is this vision and its attendant change that creates the prophetic spirit within the church.   When we encounter God, if on some level we are not afraid, we are not paying attention.

Following immediately upon this vision is Isaiah’s recognition of His own unfitness:

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” 

The prophets always, always see their unfitness as soon as God reveals Himself. Moses sees this bush on fire, so he takes off his sandals. He's in the presence of God, and God calls him to the task. And what does Moses say? "Yes, sir I'll go"? No, he does not. He says things like, "I don't know what to say. What's your name anyway? On top of that, I stutter and I don't speak very clearly, and they're not going to believe what I have to say. Could you send someone else?" (Exodus 3 and 4).

When the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, he said, "I don't know how to speak. I am only a youth." (Jeremiah 1:6)

A vision of the Lord brings forward the prophetic gifts in the church. In the prophetic church’s response there is always this sense of the church being unfit for the task.

So we have a vision of the Lord as He is. Not some tamed-down, watered-down version of God that's our pal or our buddy, but the Holy One of Israel who, in an incredible contrast, actually IS our friend. Figure that one out. We understand our own unfitness: "For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips."

Sometimes I think we feel pretty good about ourselves. And on some level that's not bad. We shouldn't feel bad about ourselves all the time. However, sometimes I think we congratulate ourselves because we're faithful Christians and here we are going to church and all those pagans out there aren't and aren't we good people. And we're really thinking, "God is lucky to have people like us." It's hyperbole, I realize, but it's true, isn't it? We don't stop and think that in the presence of the Holy God, we are all unfit.

And as unfit as Isaiah is, as we are, this is what happens:

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

Put yourselves in Isaiah's shoes. I've got this incredibly terrifying vision, and then this bright burning angel with six wings flies and gets a red hot coal from the altar and brings it towards me. This is not going to go well.

And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

You see, the true prophetic church encounters the living God, understands our own unfitness and then experiences the power of God to change, forgive, heal and transform.

I want to point out where Isaiah goes after this:

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

He encounters the atoning power of God as the terrifying hot coal touches his lips, and he goes from "Woe is me" to "Here am I." That's the action of God. That's God as He is.  That is the power of God’s healing atonement in us.

So we have this beautiful, wonderful picture of the transformation of Isaiah.  And that’s where the story stops.  Right? At least that where the lesson stops today, but rhere is more to be said and the second half of the chapter is not as happy.

What happens? Well, God preps him for the mission:

And he said, “Go, and say to this people: “‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand; keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Here's the deal, prophetic church: You're going to go out, and it's not going to be a cakewalk. I remember a few years ago someone was prophesying over me, and they said some very encouraging, positive things, which I really appreciated.

Bit it was really upbeat in contrast to what God is preparing Isaiah for.

God says to Isaiah and us, "This is not going to be a screaming success right out of the gate. You are going to a dull and indifferent people. They don't want to hear, and they don't care. You might care deeply, but they could care less." It's like when you're having a conversation and you bring up the Bible as the ultimate authority with somebody who'd just as soon burn a Bible as read one. They don't care. We're lucky if they're indifferent, if not antagonistic.

Then I said, “How long, O Lord? 

Because I can do anything for a short period of time, as long as I know there's an end in sight. 

And God says this...Are you ready? Because I don't think you are. I do not think the church in North America is ready for this word and what, I believe, is imminently upon us.

How long?

And He said: “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, and the Lord removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.”

So here's the problem about the prophets: They're so gloomy and doomy. Because, as we all know, in the modern church, because we want to be attractional and make sure people feel good when they come here, we need to hear an upbeat message! Something that's encouraging! Something that'll make people feel good about things!

But Paul says to Timothy, "For the time is coming"--and friends, it's upon us--"when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions."  (2 Timothy 4:3)

That's not them, by the way. We never talk about "they" because "they" aren't the problem. I'm the problem. We too easily surround ourselves with the very things we want to hear. We hear also from the Old Testament in Jeremiah, "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace." 

We cannot speak peace when there is no peace.

So as we think about that prophetic reality, encountering God as He is means proclaiming the truth as IT is. I want to be really clear about this: The prophetic message is not about feeling good. The prophetic message is about the stark reality that we are facing and the real hope we need to face it. We would like perky and upbeat, at least I would! The perky and upbeat message makes us feel good about God, ourselves and the world. But friends, we don't need to feel good. We need the real Christian virtue of hope.

I want to read the last line of Isaiah chapter 6 and remind you: "The holy seed is its stump."

That is the prophetic message. The prophet tells us that in spite of the fact that this is going to be hard work and nobody's going to care and it's going to get worse, that the holy seed is its stump. That God is going to act.

So where does hope come from? Hope comes from the encounter with God as He is, as I've outlined already. Being transformed by him. But hope is also formed because we practice the virtue. We choose the hope.

You know how I feel about Christians who are like, "AAAHH! The world's going to hell in a handbasket!" The world is going exactly where God intends it to go. Stop having a hissy fit.

The German theologian, Josef Pieper, says this: "Today when we speak of despair, we are usually referring to a psychological state into which an individual falls almost against his will.”[i]  As it is used in Pieper's work, however, the term describes a decision of the will. Hope is engendered because we choose it.

The mood state of hope and despair will follow consistent will decisions of hope and despair. So if we choose, "AAH! It's not going to work out," then we're going to feel it a lot. If in an encounter with the Holy One of Israel we choose to hope, the mood will also follow us as well.

We can choose to hope because God is as He is, and He has met us in Jesus Christ. Leanne Payne says this: "We as Christians, of all people, have every reason to be optimistic."[ii]

We do not need good feeling, although it is a plus when it comes. We need hope in stark and sobering circumstances.

I come back to my opening thoughts on John 3:16.

Our calling as Christians in this time and this age is not to "parish". By that I mean, create a nice place for us to come to church and feel good about. We need something deeper. Way deeper.

Now don't get me wrong and think I am suggesting that we don't really need to go to church; that we can worship God wherever we are.  Foolishness. Utter foolishness. You can't. Because that’s not about worshiping God as He is. It's about worshiping God as I'd like him to be: "I would like to worship God without the pesky trouble of all those other Christians with whom I would have to be in relationship.” And we are pesky. We are irritating. We are sinful. We say things we shouldn't say.  

A time is coming, friends, when we will even more urgently need the fellowship together to remain faithful. Because it is not going to be simple. It is not going to be easy. The cultural shift, the philosophical shift of our time has gone away from the church, and we've lost that battle. The ship actually has sailed on that one. The ferry has left the dock. 

The writer of Hebrews says this: "Do not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing", because you will not survive.

How we think about the church needs to radically change. He did not come into the world that we might PARISH, but that we might have eternal life. We are so often too hung up on things that don't amount to a hill of beans. We get our knickers in a knot about something not being right at church on Sunday, and we don't realize that it’s not a big deal. We are blessed just to be able to have a place to meet together publicly.

We need to get in touch with God as He is, because it's only God as He is who's going to give us the strength to be faithful in the season that's ahead.

Canon David Roseberry of the Anglican Church in North America said this, in and email I received this week.: "Nearly every week there is some eruption in the culture that should make us all go to God and pray for wisdom and discernment. How do we lead our church? How do we think about these things? How does the church stand and proclaim the Gospel and bear witness to its truth in a post-truth age?"

Great questions. Really, really great questions. Because I don't want a club.

One of the phrases we throw around a lot in our diocese is, "This is not your grandmother's Episcopal church." And we're usually saying that in the sense of, 'We're not stuffy.' Well it's true, we're not your grandmother's Episcopal church. Yet that is exactly what we're trying to build, isn't it? Church and church experience as we have known it in our lifetime.

And what we're trying to build, frankly, can feel like the Anglican club, or the Presbyterian club or the Pentecostal club of Burlington, Vermont, rather than what the church needs to be right now, which is this (and I choose these words very carefully): a crucible for the formation of radical disciples for Jesus Christ.

The truth is, your grandmother's Episcopal church has not prepared us for the coming time, nor has it stemmed the philosophical slide of the past 50 to 100 years. We are doing something wrong, friends. Let's try something different.

I hope that I have been prophetically gloomy and doomy enough for you. But I want to come back to the end of Isaiah, because "the holy seed is its stump."

About eight years ago in our backyard, we had a tree that was dead. We cut it down, and left the stump there because we were too cheap to grind out the stump like you're supposed to. And then, lo and behold, a tree grew. Now that tree is beautiful and healthy. It's not as big as the last one yet, and the stump is all rotted and rather disgusting. But out of the stump comes a tree, which one day will be as beautiful as the last. Probably not in my lifetime. But this isn't about my lifetime or your lifetime. This is about the life of the church.

I realize I painted rather a bleak picture on Trinity Sunday. But I don't want to lie to you. It's a bleak time. And it's going to get harder. We may be decimated: reduced to a tenth. We may be even more than decimated. But this is the work of God. And whatever happens to the church, God will raise her up.

So friends, I call you on this Trinity Sunday to encounter God as He is. To lay aside the stupid stuff and care about the things that really matter. Because we do not need to feel good. We need real Christian hope, and we need to be a crucible for the formation of radical disciples. Because that's what happens when you encounter the real God as He is.

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[i] Josef Pieper, Faith-Hope-Love,  Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1997, p. 114

[ii] From a lecture at the PCM conference in Montreal in 1994.

Uncomfortable comfort

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. 

Revelation 15:1

Seven plagues…with them the wrath of God is finished.  Such are the words of the vision of St. John as a comfort to Christians in the first century.  Plagues and wrath as comfort.  Perhaps I’m not tracking with him on this.  The comfort, of course, is that the wrath of God is ended.  But 20 centuries later, I can hardly get to the comfort of such words because I am, perhaps, offended by the very notion of God having wrath.  What is meant as comfort is uncomfortable because it assumes a God of wrath – and something that deserves wrath.

Let’s consider first the ramifications of a wrathless God.  I wonder what it is that makes you outraged.  What abuse, exploitation or disregard of animal, person or planet gets you exercised?  What is it that inspires in you a rant at the injustice or shortsightedness of it all?  Injustice is the key word here.  We are moved to anger by what we perceive to be unjust. 

Sometimes my sense of injustice is personal at offenses, real or imagined, against me.  But when I have the grace to see beyond myself to a broader context, there are things that leave me speechless at injustices and atrocities both against individuals and groups as a whole.  As a counselor I have heard many things that are legitimate atrocities committed against individuals.  And I feel angry because it is wicked and unjust.

Since God is personal – and by that I do not mean that he is my personal God, like my personal trainer or personal chef, I mean he embodies, quite literally in Jesus, the qualities of personhood.  Since God is personal he acts as a Person and so has a sense of justice – better said, he is the source of justice.  He is also outraged at injustice.  Anger at injustice is godly wrath.

A wrathless God is a God either without any sense of justice, or perhaps worse yet, a God who does not love enough to actually care.  Wrath, ultimately, is a product of a heart that loves and is disturbed by abuse to the objects of that love.  Wrathless is either also loveless or justice-less or both.  And that is no God at all.

And on the topic of deserving wrath, we are also uncomfortable.  Two things here.  In one sense we are too individualistic to appreciate what first-century Christians took for granted, and on another level we are not individualistic enough.

Our sense of wrath at injustice and, indeed, the very existence of atrocities committed by men and women on both a small and large scale, is the clue to us that as a race or a species, we do things deserving of wrath.  I may not have personally participated in the Holocaust or the slaughter of Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda or the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.  But I am a member of the same family who did.  These things alone tell me that there is a problem, rather a wickedness in the family that is deserving of wrath.  Obvious to me if I look and obvious to first-century Chrsitians.  When I think about wrath I am all too often thinking about myself and whether I am deserving of it – alternating between fearing it may be true and being unable to imagine it could be.  Too individualistic.

In the recent Russell Crowe film, Noah, a film I have not seen but have heard is a profound disappointment to those expecting a faithful biblical account, Noah is, again I’m told, deeply convinced of the wickedness of the human race.  He sees the cruelty and the atrocities of men and women and understands that there is a problem.  He understands the wrath of God.  Sadly, he succumbs to despair in this – or so I am told.  Russell Crowe’s Noah understands that there is a problem with the family as a whole. 

But we are also not individualistic enough.  It is my desire and my practice to put myself in a category different from the “bad guys”.  That is not to say that there are not real bad guys whose monstrous action dwarf the evil that I commit.  Theologically I understand that “there but for the grace of God…”  But in practice I am unconvinced.  I need to come back to the point that I am a member of the family with the problem.  That would be me.  And in that I need to take the wrath of God seriously.

So back to the uncomfortable comfort of Revelation 15:1.  The comfort in the end of God’s wrath and God’s plagues, indeed the comfort of the existence of hell, is that God will place an eternal limit on evil and will no longer have cause for wrath.  That with these plagues his wrath is ended means that we who ultimately long for justice despite our corporate and individual wickedness, will be satisfied.  God’s wrath is ended because the fullness of his kingdom will have come.  I am comforted.

Heat and Fire

And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.  And when you have multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again.

 (Jeremiah 3:15-16)

Well, Jeremiah really nailed it on that one.  When was the last time you heard someone say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord”, Indiana Jones notwithstanding?  What a remarkably odd thing to say.  What exactly did he mean by that?

The clues are, as is usually the case, elsewhere in the text.  Jeremiah chapter 3 is a ringing condemnation of “treacherous Judah”.  Israel and Judah became separate kingdoms after the death of Solomon.  Jeremiah is preaching perhaps some 300 years later.  In those intervening years the two nations have gained “reputations”.  To oversimplify, Israel was the bad child and Judah the good one (relatively speaking).  In truth, if you look at the books of I and II Kings and I and II Chronicles you will note that Judah didn’t exactly get an “A” in faithfulness. 

Israel ran wildly after other gods and had little faithfulness to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob according to the Biblical witness.  But in Jeremiah 3 Judah is compared unfavorably to Israel – “And the Lord said to me, ‘Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah’”.  (Jeremiah 3:11)  And why?

It would appear that at least Israel was transparent about running around on God.  Shameless, perhaps, but transparent.  (Perhaps this was why Jesus seemed to prefer the company of tax collectors and sinners over the Pharisees of his day.  At least they were open about their failings.)  Judah, however, was doing just the same, but mouthing the right words and holding to the right practices.  After all, the temple and the ark of the covenant of the Lord were in Judah – the real goods, not the abominable travesty that was the temple in Samaria.

But here is Jeremiah’s point – they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord”.  So you have the ark.  Congratulations.  Do you have the Lord whose ark it is?

 This is the problem.  My problem, actually, and quite likely yours.  I, like treacherous Judah, tend to hold to some external thing as a sign of the Lord and get it confused with the Lord himself.  It may be an object, like the ark, which has historically been the thing in which or the place where we have known the power and the presence of the Lord.  The temple in Jerusalem itself was another example.  But we are reminded in Revelation:  “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb.” (Revelation 21:22)  Note the same correction – it is not the temple, but the Lord whose temple it is, that is the point.

Always the thing or place that becomes our idol, for that is what it is, was once or perhaps even regularly a source of the true and living presence of God.  And as such, it was and is a good thing.  But again, we confuse the heat with the fire.  The heat is the way in which we know the power of the fire.  But it is the fire that is the real deal. 

Someone with a deeper understanding of the physics of it all may object saying that the fire and the heat are the same thing and can’t be separated.  If so, I would say, yes.  And all the more it is the same.  Who can properly distinguish between God and the benefits of his presence?  But I would also remind us all that once there was a fire which had no heat – see Exodus 3.  And yes, I digress…

Sometimes it is an object or a place.  Sometimes it is a form of worship.  I was a member of a church once where there had been a significant revival of faith a decade or so before my time there.  Sounds good, but it wasn’t entirely.  Eventually the revival, which was associated with the worship music of that time, became equated with that music.  It wasn’t a true worship of God unless you sang “Freely, freely” or “Shine, Jesus, Shine.”  (There are those, of course, who would say it isn’t real worship unless you sing traditional hymns, or don’t sing at all, or have communion, or don’t have communion – you get my point).

One last point before I close.  And this is important.  When we realize that something, or place, or practice, has taken the place of the Lord, we are wont to denounce the said thing as a trap which must be avoided at all costs.  There are so many babies littered about with oceans of bathwater.  The things in themselves are not bad.  After all, who gave the command to build the ark and the tabernacle, for example?  Yes.  The Lord.

All of these things are and can be aids in drawing near to God.  The people of Israel saw and knew the presence and power of the Lord in the ark and the temple.  They were aids in bringing them to the saving knowledge of God.

All of these things, places and practices are the same.  Until they are not.  Until we get them confused with the Fire Himself.  That means sometimes we need to readjust our perspective.  Repent in sackcloth and ashes.  Return to the Lord with all your heart.  Rend your heart and not your garments.  Sounds very Lenten, doesn’t it?

Holy and merciful Father, show me the things, places and practices that I have confused with you.  Give me grace not to hate the things, but rather the idolatry of my heart, that I may truly return to you with all my heart.  Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, on God, world without end.  Amen.