Our first reading for this Sunday begins with an ordinary, yet inviting image: “When a sieve is shaken, the husks appear”. It’s likely that when we hear this, our thoughts go to where the next line also goes: “so do one’s faults.” Along with images of the wheat being separated from the chaff, we tend to thinking of these images and metaphors as a way of thinning out the herd, letting the cream rise to the top. These are images of judgment condemnation — or so we typically think.
There is a real tendency to focus on the negative, on the chaff that is being thrown into the furnace and burned away. We don’t want to be that chaff. There is likely a survival instinct that is kicking in as it may be more necessary and practical to be attentive to the dangers of things. But if this is a natural, evolutionary reality, God tells us, and calls us away from these natural things of a fallen nature to the greater things of healing and union with Him, of returning to our original condition. In other words He calls us to look to Him, rather than what easily draws our attention.
Rather than focus on the destruction of the chaff, the husks and the rotten fruit that is shaken from the tree, I invite you to put your attention on the wheat and grain that appears when the sieve is shaken. What Wisdom is describing for us is fruitfulness and the tree, which we also hear about in the Gospel, that bears good fruit.
As we prepare to begin Lent think of it as a time when the sieve is shaken and the test of what the potter has molded going into the furnace. This is a time of strengthening, straightening and drawing out the good fruit. It is a privileged and sanctified time of harvest. Through our acts of fasting, prayer and alms giving (charity), we shake the trees. We are hoping that fruit falls. And if you find a lot of fruit falling to the ground; if you find a lot of chaff being winnowed, give thanks and take heart, do not despair. With each piece of fruit that falls, it leaves healthier, stronger, more luscious fruit in the tree, because it is only the rotten and bad fruit that falls.
Do not be afraid to be vigorous in the shaking, the extra practices that you take on, whether they are acts of penance or positive holy practices —we need both—these are not acts of punishment, we are not throwing ourselves into the fire of destruction. But each sin that we confess, each bad fruit that we remove and husk that is pulled away, each act of fasting is about what is being left behind. Doing little, or the bare minimum during Lent is like the worker who thinks that by gentling shaking the sieve, he will gain more grain. When in reality, he will be eating more husks.
