Consequences (02/19/2024)

When my son entered our home through the garage door, he had the look of one who had just run the gauntlet. “What is in your garage?” He asked me, wide eyed. I explained that his dad hadn’t taken out the garbage the weekend before. I had thrown some raw meat trimmings in the previous Saturday, thinking it was going to the curb Sunday evening. A week later, the stench was horrible. My husband took the cue and rolled the garbage bin outside the garage and left the garage door open to air out the garage. And this morning, the garbage truck emptied our stinky bin. But I re-learned the drill. Actions as well as failures to act have consequences.

Usually, I always have a plastic bag in my freezer where I store potentially “smelly” food items until it is time to take the garbage bin to the curb for collection. It prevents the type of foul reek we had going on this past weekend. I was so upset with myself that I hadn’t done that the week before because I know that my husband doesn’t always take the garbage to the curb on Sunday evening for Monday collection. In his defense, he doesn’t always realize the necessity. My husband has no sense of smell.

As we make our Lenten journeys, what we do and what we fail to do, as we say in the Confiteor, matters either for the good or for the bad. Today’s gospel reading from Matthew about the Judgment of Nations is a perfect reminder that whatever we do for the least among us we do for our loving LORD and whatever we fail to do for another, we fail to do for our loving LORD. Our actions and our inactions have consequences, especially those that involve our treatment of one another, sisters and brothers in our LORD.

One of my promises for this Lent is to listen more attentively to the Spirit who tries to guide me and to respond when the idea comes to mind. I tend to get an idea of someone and something I should do for that person, and then I keep going rather than addressing the inspired idea at the moment. And inevitably, that good idea is lost, not acted upon. I am trying to be better about acting immediately on these “inspired actions.”

Another promise I have made for this Lent is that daily I will seek at least one way of meeting the needs of others. We live in a world where the needs abound. They are all around us: the lonely and isolated, the hungry, the financially insecure, the ill, the imprisoned. Can we take time to make a call or a visit, to send a card, to drop off a meal? There are needs across our globe, but we are mistaken to think they are all at a distance. There are need, real needs in our own neighborhoods.

Let us read the gospel message for today in Matthew 25. Let us take the message of our loving Savior to heart, let us commit to seeing “the other” and responding to their needs when we see them knowing all along that we are also responding lovingly to our LORD. Let us make living out Jesus’ commands to us in Matthew 25 one of our directives for this Lent because we understand what we do and what we fail to do have consequences.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.

Thoughts? Questions? Requests? – katewiskus@gmail.com