Become vessels of the goodness of God

GRENADA

Bishop Clyde Harvey of St George’s-in-Grenada said he is moved to implore faithful to make this Lent one of deeper silence.

Silence, the bishop said in his Lenten message to the diocese, is the “best response” that brings you deeper into your heart and soul.

“This silence may not answer any questions. Instead, it calls you to patience with yourself and with our God,” Bishop Harvey wrote in his ‘Shepherd’s Voice’ column in the February 2021 issue of the diocesan publication, Catholic Focus.

The bishop mentioned that last year, around this time, he wrote his column thinking that “we were headed into our normal Lenten observances.” COVID-19 changed all that, he said.

Lent has always been a period of preparation, and many people, the Bishop observed, have seen Lent as a period to get things (grace) from God or as a period to recompense a God whom we have hurt.

He explained God speaks to us, not when we demand it, but “when we are open to His voice in whatever form He speaks – in His Word, in the silence of our hearts, in the voice of another human, or in the breeze and the water.”

He ended urging the faithful to pray for the grace to listen, hear and obey for “there will be much to listen to this Lent.”

In delivering the homily for Ash Wednesday Mass, Bishop Harvey told faithful to focus more on what is happening deep within them as they make their Lenten journey.

“Will you be able come Easter to say ‘Yes Lord, I see new life in me once again’. Will you be able when Easter comes to identify yourself as having made a journey… that is what it’s about,” Bishop Harvey told worshippers at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, St George’s.

The Second Reading, he said, gives a “beautiful expression” to become the “goodness of God.”

He commented that everything we think God ought to do, we have to ask ourselves ‘Why am I not doing it, why am I not allowing God to use my hands, feet, eyes, ears to show forth His goodness in the world?’

Bishop Harvey also reminded the congregation that Lent is not a time for showcasing of almsgiving and sacrifice.

“A clue to that of course is when Jesus says when you fast, do not go around with a gloomy face…look good, look glowing. And why is that? I think part of the key to that is in the very word Lent. Lent has come to mean for us this time of 40 days of heaviness.”

Bishop Harvey also warned of giving alms with fanfare. “That’s superficial,” he said.