Taking the Time to Make a Difference

It's the time when people from "up north" flee the cold and the snow to swell the population of Florida and other warm-weather areas. We live in a world full of seasons and rhythms, some fast, some slow, some secular, some religious, some based on the weather, some based on the days of the week or the parts of the day. Traffic and weather information are repeated on all-news radio "on the ones" or "on the eights" or on some similar pattern every 10 minutes every hour. Tides come in and tides go out - in the oceans of the world - and also, it seems, among immigrating populations of the world. Sergio Aguilera, the Mexican Consul in Indianapolis, recently provided a page of immigrant admission data for the United States, showing a kind of tidal movement of peoples over the centuries. Millions of European immigrants arrived in each of the decades from the 1840s through the 1920s. More than eight million arrived in just the first decade of the twentieth century. The tide of immigrants is now arriving from the Americas- millions of people arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, with 3.6 million in the 1980s and almost 4.5 million in the 1990s. In our world of 10-minute radio news cycles, it may be difficult to sit back and examine the global seasons of centuries. But during our season of Lent, perhaps this is the time to make such an examination.

* * *

Lent may seem to be slow. But in Great Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor examined the season of Lent itself, and concluded that the Church does not intend for it to be "interminable." In remarks prepared for delivery on Ash Wednesday, and published by the news agency, Zenit, the cardinal said, "Lent, in a sense, ought to pass like a flash with a sense of desperate urgency." Lent "is a time of intense focus," he said. "Lent is a Christian way of expressing the brief life we live here on earth, a life of probation without a moment we can afford to waste." The cardinal quoted St. Paul, "We beg you, once again, not to neglect the grace of God that we have received. Now is the favorable time. This is the day of salvation." The time between Ash Wednesday and Easter is extraordinarily important, "because it prepares us for the new life which we celebrate at Easter. And that new life is the path to our eternal salvation."

* * *

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor offered some advice. "So if people ask me what they should do for Lent, I am inclined to say, on this Ash Wednesday, you should not try to do without something, but to get something done as if your eternal salvation depended on it." To be more specific, he said, "Each one of us should spend more time in prayer during these 40 days; some time in reading a Lenten book about how better to follow Jesus Christ, and some exercise which involves care for others, perhaps a visit to someone less fortunate than we are. What we should give up is whatever stops us doing that extra thing.

* * *

Whether Lent seems interminable to you, or passes like a flash with a sense of urgency, now is the time to make a difference. Now is the time for you and your family members to reflect on the seasons and rhythms that affect your life, for good or for ill. Now is the time to care for others - taking time for a family meal, giving way to a commuter caught in the same hour of rushing home, or welcoming immigrants who have left homelands in search of a better life.

Send your comments about "Taking Time to Make a Difference" to . Contact about subscribing for your newspaper.