First Reading – Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15
Responsorial Psalm – Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 11
Second Reading – 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12
The readings for today remind me of the theological notion of massa damnata. Prominently associated with St. Augustine and an integral part of some strands of Reformation theology (especially influencing John Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination), this principle proposes that humanity, in its collective sense, is rightly understood a “condemnable mass” in the aftermath of the Fall.
While there are Catholic critiques of simplistic interpretations of this idea, the notion is not incompatible with our faith. In fact, the assertion that humans stand in need of grace in the aftermath of original sin is a bedrock principle of our hope in the Cross and Resurrection. We can see scriptural resources for this understanding of humanity’s dependence on God’s saving grace in today’s readings.
The Gospel reading, for instance, offers some historical examples of people who suffered painful tragedies and challenges the assumption that these occurrences reflected an inordinate level of wickedness on the part of the victims. Jesus’s response to the self-assured distancing of saying, “they must have done something terrible to deserve it, whereas we are safe because we are good,” is a firm insistence that no one can be so righteous on their own. Sin persists, he makes clear, and repentance is required to be in right relationship with God once again.
In the second reading, St. Paul offers a similar cautionary tale, noting that even the Israelites who left Egypt under the intervention of God’s power in Passover still found themselves unworthy to enter the promised land. Lest anyone should miss the implications, St. Paul insists, “These things have happened to them as an example,” and explicitly warns, “whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.”
Read in isolation, these two readings might spark a turn to despair, prompting us to ask in the famous words of the apostles, “who then can be saved” (Matthew 19:25)? The beauty of this week’s readings, however, is that these reminders of our fallenness are not presented to us in isolation. Instead, they come only after we have proclaimed as a community that “The Lord is kind and merciful” in our Responsorial Psalm.
The grounding for this conviction can be found in the first reading, which recounts Moses’s encounter with God in the burning bush. As their discussion ends, God famously proclaims the divine name as “I am who am,” defining God’s very identity in terms of relationships of fidelity: “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”
Scholars have various interpretations for the significance of this self-revelation of the divine name, but one of the crucial implications is God’s assurance of accompaniment. By saying I am the God of these relationships, not I was, God professes to be continually present to God’s people. Notably, this is a declaration that not only comes well after the Fall but one which also encompasses figures whose own histories are colored by their fallenness. The message is clearly that God does not abandon humanity, even when they stray (an interpretation reinforced by the subsequent story of Israel’s fraught relationship with God’s covenant).
Here, then, is a powerful Lenten message: Yes, we are fallen creatures and are rightly called to repentance. At the same time, God is present with us, exhorting us to follow this process of repentance and empowering the work of repentance with the gift of divine grace that is ever on offer. We can therefore turn to the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as resources for our ongoing conversion because God has given us the grace to do so. We need not look at our sinfulness and despair; instead, we can honestly assess our fallen nature to avoid the dangers of relying on a false sense of self-righteousness and can put our trust in the conviction that the “Lord is [indeed] kind and merciful.”
