In last week’s Bulletin I began sharing thoughts about the Prayer of Ephrem, which is THE Lenten Him of the Eastern Church. In the first verse of the prayer, we deal with the four negative “objects” of metanoia. They are the objects to be removed. But God alone can remove them. Hence, the first part of this prayer must be a cry from the bottom of our human helplessness. We must sense, by the way, that we are truly helpless to grow in our likeness of Jesus without God’s help.

The prayer then moves to the four positive aims of metanoia. The first identified is chastity. We must not reduce the meaning of chastity to only sexual behavior. Chastity is meant to be the positive counterpart of sloth. Truly a better definition for chastity in this case is whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. It has been clearly connected to sexual behavior because frequently we humans, when engaged in sexual activities, forget the bigger picture which is WHY God has made us sexual beings.

The second object of metanoia that we are called to developed is the virtue of humility. Humility is the       ability to truly see ourselves as God sees us and to accept the fact that God created us as we are because He knows that the combination of strengths and weaknesses which each one of us has are absolutely right to help us spiritually grow.

It seems that if we develop both chastity and humility the next virtue begins to develop, namely the       virtue of patience. We frequently fail to see that patience is something that must be developed. It does not come to us naturally. When we come to truly understand the meaning and purpose of life, we become patient. It seems to be true, as we examine the lives of the saints, that the closer we come to God the more patient we become.

The final characteristic we are called to develop is unconditional love. We have, because God’s Spirit dwells within us, the potential to be able to unconditionally love others as God loves us. It is all a matter of beginning to think and act like Jesus. This, of course, is why we have been called to embrace the Way of Jesus. His way is a way that reflects whole-mindedness, humility, patience and love. His way is a way that truly understands the meaning and purpose of earthly life.