Lent Week 5: Tuesday
WHY GRUMBLE?
The first reading from the Book of Numbers shows the Israelites complaining against Moses… and worse, against God (!) while traveling to freedom in the difficult desert route. They resent that God and his prophet released them from the false comforts of their slavery in Egypt to bring them to a journey full of challenges, no matter if that journey was their path to liberation from servitude forever. Because of this, they earned a punishment and many of those with hardened hearts died.
In the gospel (Jn 8), the Lord Jesus speaks a marvelous truth of revelation to the people, about his relationship with the Father, and the Father’s union with him. Instead of listening, some of them kept interrupting him with comments and questions that had nothing to do with his message. In fact, they were simply ignoring his message and befuddling his words. In their hearts, they were secretly grumbling against the Lord.
In the rule of St. Benedict, grumbling or murmuring or complaining is a serious sin in a monastic community. To do so is a sign of pride because it is a sign of resistance to the will of the Lord or refusal to receive his message of loving, though mysterious, guidance. To do so also meant becoming impatient or angry that things are not going our way. Grumbling does no good to the spiritual life of any person. This negativity eats a person up and tends to swallow others in his mire.
Other saints join in this teaching against complaining. St. Francis de Sales says that “Undoubtedly a person who complains commits a sin by doing so.” And St. Augustine goes even further by commenting: “Oh, what a miserable, deadly plague! Oh, how poisonous!” Clearly, then to grumble, murmur, or complain against a manifest will of God spells a spiritual disaster, as the saints preach against it in order to awaken us against our tendency towards it.
How do we avoid this trap, then? In the first reading, Moses raises a saraph serpent for people to look at and be healed. In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus speaks of being “lifted up,” not in glory, but in love and obedience to the Father on the Cross. It is he to whom we should look at when we are tempted to be unreasonable complainers. When difficulties or challenges arise, instead of murmuring, let us remove our attention to ourselves and look to the Cross where Jesus teaches us to trust that leads to surrender, and a surrender that manifests obedience. By fixing our eyes on him in every hardship we endure, let us allow his clarity and peace to help us find more positive solutions to our challenges, instead of falling into the trap of pride and impatience.
