“It’s Time to Wake Up!” by Maria Allen, Fiat Ventures
Fourth Sunday of Lent
“Beep! Beep! Beeeeep!” My alarm seems to go off way too early every morning. I snooze, roll over, and promptly fall back to sleep at least once, maybe twice, ok – maybe like ten times before I finally drag myself out of bed.
Ooof, getting up is hard to do sometimes!
Why?
Maybe we’ve made that mistake of staying up too late the night before and aren’t prepared for the consequences of being exhausted. Maybe we’ve got a lot on our plate for the day ahead of us, and we don’t want to face it quite yet. Maybe the days have been filled with problems, hurt, or pain and we want to avoid thinking about it for as long as possible. Or maybe we are just too comfy under those warm covers to want to come out our sluggish, happy sleepiness. Who knows? It could be one or more of those reasons.
It takes courage to get up sometimes. It takes bravery. St. Josemaria Escriva calls it, “the heroic minute,” that chance to choose to get up out of bed. Sometimes we have to be heroic just to get out of bed.
It’s like that with our faith life too, our life with Jesus Christ. In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul urges us, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14)
Maybe we are asleep in our spiritual life. Maybe we don’t have much of a relationship with God to speak of right now. Why? Maybe we have made a mistake in the past and are afraid turning back to God. Maybe we are so busy, stressed, or overwhelmed that we feel like we don’t have the time to talk to God. Maybe we keep putting it off. Maybe we are struggling, faced with obstacles, hurting, and we don’t want to talk to God about it but we rather avoid Him, ignoring the problem. Or maybe we are just too comfortable living the way we are now, in our sluggish, “happy” way, that we just don’t want to bother. Maybe it’s one of these reasons, or maybe it’s all of the above.
“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”
Perhaps this will take great courage. Perhaps this will take great bravery. Perhaps this Lent, we can practice the great heroism of waking up in our lives of faith.
Now, during this season of Lent, is the time to wake up. Wake up from our sluggish sleep and arise. Arise to see God and spend time with Him, to see Him at work in our lives – to see Him, to know Him, and to love Him. Jesus Christ did not suffer, and die, and rise again so that we could just sleep. He did so that we may awake – so that we may arise! And so, awake, O sleeper, and arise!
