Today is Ash Wednesday. The Scriptures on Ash Wednesday, as does our text from Ben Sira, remind us that God gives us the ability to choose. God’s greatest gift is freedom, and our choices determine whether or not we will be free.
At the beginning of The Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius Loyola offers us what he calls
the ‘Principle and Foundation’. This text is about grappling with the purpose for which we were created. It is when we have a clearer sense of our purpose that we can choose well.
The text is as follows in The Spiritual Exercises:
The human person is created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by doing so to save his or her soul; and it is
for the human person that the other things on the face of the earth are created, as helps to the pursuit of this end. It follows from this that the person has to use these things insofar as they help towards this end, and to be free of them insofar as they stand in the way of it.
To attain this, we need to make ourselves indifferent towards all created things, provided the matter is subject to our free choice, and there is no prohibition. Thus, for our part, we
should not want health more than sickness, wealth more than poverty, fame more than disgrace, a long life more than a short one—and so with everything else; desiring and choosing only what conduces more to the end for which we are created. (Translation by Michael Ivens SJ).
Right at the beginning, Ignatius lays out the purpose of our lives: praise, reverence, and serve God to save our souls. “Serving God” means seeking to do
God’s will. When we seek God’s will, we make choices that will make God’s will a reality. “Saving our soul” might conjure up negative images, but the Spanish word that Ignatius uses, salud, not only refers to salvation but to our whole spiritual being and progress towards God.
As we enter the Season of Lent, this is God’s invitation: to consider the purpose for which you were created, to
understand that purpose more deeply, and to make choices that empower you to fulfil it, and in so doing to become a spiritually whole person. We might need to repent for the times we have not lived our purpose well.
As Lent begins, what will you do to get in touch with the meaning and purpose of your life so that you can make good choices and, in so doing, realise your full potential as one who praises, reverences and serves
God?
