17 March 2020
Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
“Remember your mercies, O Lord.” (Psalm 25)
Azariah teaches us a key aspect of prayer and the spiritual life: the importance of memory to fight against trials, persecutions, temptations, and desolations. Memory is a powerful and essential tool in the spiritual life. Azariah’s prayer, in the midst of the fiery furnace, is a poignant cry for God to remember his covenant of mercy. Azariah wants God to remember this covenant for two reasons: the first is to show how Azariah’s actions are in accord with this covenant “let our sacrifice be in your presence today as we follow you unreservedly.” The second reason is to beg God’s deliverance in light of his mercy and fidelity. When faced with certain death, with the seeming absurdity of dying for faith in God, Azariah remembers God’s covenant and acts in fidelity to this covenant. Azariah also remembers that his God is a God a mercy and faithfulness and so Azariah’s prayer is one of trust in God’s providence to deliver him from this fiery trial, not because he is worthy, but because God is faithful and has made a covenant with his people which God will not abandon.
Azariah’s prayer teaches us how to respond in the face of our own trials and tribulations. When faced with temptations, with hardships, or with spiritual dryness and desolation (times when God feels absent, or spiritual practices seem meaningless), it can be hard to continue in fidelity and virtue. We can feel, perhaps like those around Azariah, that it is better to kneel before a false idol than face the fiery furnace which seems so senseless to human eyes. In these moments in our spiritual lives, it is our memory that can come to great spiritual aid here, like it did for Azariah. When we can’t feel God close, we are called to remember those times when we did, to remember God’s action in the lives of the saints and in the pages of Scripture, and to remember that this same God who has acted in our life, and in the lives of our ancestors, is a God to be trusted, hoped in and followed. This Lent let us strengthen our memories with those moments when we have felt the Lord close in our lives, or in the witness of the Scriptures and the Saints, so as to fortify ourselves for our next spiritual combat.