Written by Father Michael
On a freezing Friday evening this winter I easily ascended a devilish dervish driveway to the top of a dune to pick up my son for dinner. He drove to the restaurant. 
On our return there was a new downy comforter of snow covering his drive. He parked at the bottom and shoveled the drive. Its black surface sleek and clean did not present any slippery surface as I climbed the dune to get in my car. I backed and turned to face the descent and turned my wheels to the angle of the drive. My son stood on the bottom of the drive. I pushed the button to open the window and say good bye. My car started down the slope not in the angle of the drive but straight down. In fact I was headed straight down in the direction of my son who quickly moved to the other side of the light pole as the car in its own determined fashion moseyed towards and cozied up to lamppost.
As Lent begins I am reminded how I am always trying to steer God in the direction I want to go. It is part of our human condition. In Luke’s gospel I reminded again that we have to put aside things of this world. Die to this world. We started Lent receiving ashes on out foreheads with the prayer “Remember, thou are dust and to dust thou shall return.” I spend so much time worrying about the dust that I am. God, help me do this, help me to that. God, help me get over this drippy nose. God, keep me awake so I can read this book (Essence of Prayer) by Ruth Burrows so I will have more incites to prayer. Then I can….. I can see God laughing. Yes, I do believe that spends most of his time laughing at me, at us.
Ruth Burrows tells us that prayer is not about what we can do for God. We do nothing for God. God does everything for us. As I continue to read Burrows and meditate I understand more and more the richness of the often told story about the old man that came every day and spent hours in the chapel, silent and meditating. The priest seeing him there daily finally got up the courage to ask what he said being in church so much. The man simple answered I look at God and God looks at me. The man sat in the present of God. The man knew the secret of pray and of the kingdom. Heaven is being in the presence of God and this man was just short of the Beatific Vision of being in heaven.
We have a tradition of putting our concerns and desires in prayer to God. We wrap up all our worldly concerns from health to taxes and present them to God. So bound to this world to ourselves we miss why we are here. It is about the journey home. Our prayer should be “Thy will be done.” We say it, but do we only mouth it. It is conditioned upon I say this then God gives me this.
Lent gives us a time to think of dying to our selves, dying to the calls of human nature to care for our human needs. Lent is the time to remember our spiritual needs. Why are we here? It is to do God’s will. Like my car moving towards the light, not matter how hard I turned or braked. The car had its way. God calls us to his way. Don’t fight it , prepare for it. Accept it. Let God do the steering.