17 March 2021
Wednesday in the Fourth Week of Lent
If you ever achieved fame, what would you do with it? Use it to promote yourself? Use it to promote a good cause? However you use it, if all you are doing is promoting your own interests or those of the world, eventually your project will end. Even the most well-meaning projects eventually become (at best) a footnote in history.
By now, Jesus has achieved some level of fame—enough that He cannot go into a town in Judea without being recognized. Yet He does not use His fame to do His own will or promote a cause the world thinks is glorious. The will that is done and the glory He promotes is the Father’s (cf. Jn. 5:30). This is the lesson of Lent: that if we wish to seek what lasts, we must free ourselves of our sins and our self-will, do nothing but the Father’s will, and seek nothing but the Father’ glory.