Clean Heart (5th Sunday of Lent)

Fr. Patrick Nogoy, SJ
5th Sunday of Lent
March 18, 2018

It was a time when everything was gradually turning into ruin. The rich lived a decadent lifestyle, indifferent to the plight of the poor and even squeezing whatever profit they can for their next generation to inherit. Spiritual leaders have grown rigid in their interpretation of the Law and even turned a blind eye to the corruption happening in the land. Kings have made covenants to other gods, busy consolidating their power, and easily irritated by criticisms to the point of shaming or even silencing their critics. Majority of the citizens tolerated such violence and corruption. The virtues and values coming from the true Exodus covenant that should’ve shaped Israel’s society were not only threatened but overturned. It was the worst of times. It was neither the time nor place to be a prophet of the true one God of Israel. This was the time of Jeremiah.

“Create a clean in me, O God.” In the middle of inescapable and choking mess, the psalmist cries out for a clean heart. More than being spic and span, cleanliness means order. At its basic, cleanliness is about putting things in their proper places. But what if this sense of order, this very principle that gifts us with clear direction and identity is threatened or worse, overturned? What if our notion of order that is anchored in values and virtues of faith is replaced with lies, power, or extreme self-sufficiency? Then it would be impossible to pull ourselves out of the mess. No wonder the psalmist prayed for help: Create a clean heart in me O God!

God gives his word to Jeremiah, Israel’s prophet in the worst of times. God’s promise is an act of re-ordering. It is cleaning the mess by making a new covenant—a covenant written in our hearts, a covenant coming alive in an encounter with His Son. God’s principle of order became man and asks us to follow and serve him. Responding to the invitation in this time of Lent, we ask God to create clean hearts in us so we can put things in their proper places.

We are never short of instances of disorder nowadays. We are aware how our cherished values and virtues are under attack, threatened to be replaced by illusions of order grounded on frustration, lies, irrationality, and ambition. We are being swept in a wave of confusing anger where there is wanton disregard for basic liberties, growing scepticism of leadership, and a dominant discourse devoid of reason. In this opportune time of Lent, we ask God to create clean hearts in us—clean hearts possessing the courage to put things in their proper places even if it demands a dying of self like grains of wheat falling to the ground. Clean hearts shaping us to be a community of prophets in these worse of times. Clean hearts that maybe wearied and fatigued by the world’s troubles yet are nourished by encounters with God who continues to labour in reconciling the world. Clean hearts that never give up and firmly believe that any chaos of life will eventually be put into order.