Renewing and Exercising our Mind in Christ

by Fr Jean Celestin Ngoma

Hebrews 9:11-15       St John 8:46-59

How much more shall the blood of Christ…
purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

On this Fifth Sunday of Lent, the Church invites us to enter our own inner wilderness. Lent is a season for examining not only our actions but also our thoughts. It is a time to align our fasting, prayer, and daily activities with the mind of Christ.

In the Anglican tradition, Lent represents a profound mental and spiritual shift. It is a journey of repentance and preparation as we approach the mystery of Christ’s work on the Cross. Lent is not solely about giving up certain things; it is also about the renewal of the mind.

From the earliest centuries of the Church, the Christian tradition understood that the mind requires spiritual discipline. The Church Fathers, after the Ascension of our Lord Jesus into heaven, offered spiritual exercises designed to help believers maintain an intimate and life-giving daily connection with Christ, in emulation of Saint John's analogy of the vine in John 15:1–8.

Renewing and exercising our thoughts or minds daily during Lent is our theme today.

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Nowadays, we often hear about programs such as “15-minute mental gym,” “mental fitness,”  “mind training”, or “mental weightlifting”. All these thought-provoking programmes promise to strengthen the mind and reduce stress. But long before modern psychology, we, Christians, believe that the human mind, guided by the virtue of prudence, is a power of the soul that helps us recognise truth and respond to God’s grace.

Aware of the importance of the mind to the soul, the Order for Night Prayer or Compline in the Anglican tradition invites us to confess: “Most merciful God, we confess to you that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed, and in what we have failed to do.”  The first thing we ask God to cleanse in this prayer is our thoughts, our mind. This reminds us that our mind is a field that needs constant care, a field where Christ may continually sow the seeds of truth. As Christians, we are called to let Jesus guard our thoughts, the battlefield of the spiritual struggle against the Evil One.

When meditating on our spiritual battles, some of us may have been given this image of the demon as a frightening and ugly creature hiding in a closet, waiting to jump on someone sneaking cookies while everyone else is asleep. But this childlike portrayal of demons does not really portray the true spiritual nature of Christian warfare. The Word of God teaches us that the battle against evil spirits is usually not physical. It often takes place in our minds and in our souls. Our mind may become a door through which the Evil One plants seeds of confusion, pride, resentment, false beliefs, and discouragement in our souls. These seeds can grow quietly until they shape our attitudes, our judgments, and even our faith.

We see this already in the story of creation. In the Garden of Eden, the serpent first corrupted the minds of Adam and Eve. The Evil One planted doubt and distorted the truth. Once their thinking became corrupted, their actions followed. The fall of Adam and Eve marks the moment when the human mind shifted from being God-centred to becoming self-centred and fearful. For this reason, spiritual disciplines are essential for the renewal of the mind.

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Recently, I began using the Daily Prayer application from the Church of England. [see our website for the links] As someone who once served as a Roman Catholic priest and who values traditional forms of prayer, I was initially hesitant. But for practical reasons, I eventually downloaded it. I must confess that the daily prayers, especially Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, have become a great help in keeping my mind focused on God and in becoming more aware of the false gods of this present age that continue to mislead the minds of God’s people. When prayer becomes a daily habit, it gradually reforms the way we think.

In the Book of Common Prayer, we encounter Psalm 51, David’s great psalm of repentance, written after the prophet Nathan confronted him for his sin with Bathsheba.  David cries out, praying:

"Have mercy on me, O God,
    according to your steadfast love;
    blot out my transgressions.
 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
    and cleanse me from my sin!
 For I know my transgressions,
    and my sin is ever before me.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
    let the bones that you have broken rejoice."

From David’s prayer, we learn that the guilt of sin can blow away the joy of salvation in our souls. David experienced this deeply. Yet in his suffering, experiencing the guilt of sin, he turned to God and prayed that the joy of salvation might be restored to him. What a powerful and conscious prayer with which to begin the day: “Give me the joy and gladness of your salvation. Lord. Let me experience the joy of your salvation in my life today. Do not let the joy of my salvation be taken from me today.”

Just as David felt the weight of guilt, the righteous man in Psalm 40 also prayed:

“For innumerable troubles have come about me;
     my sins have overtaken me
     so that I cannot look up;
they are more in number than the hairs of my head,
     and my heart fails me.”

Sin hinders our ascent, our ability to “look up” toward heaven. The righteous man in Psalm 40 did not wake up in the morning without thinking about his sin. At noon, the guilt of the sin remained at the back of his mind. In the evening, it was still there. This struggle and the need to be healed by Jesus echo in today’s Epistle.

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The Epistle reminds us of something extraordinary. Here is the good news: the sacrifices of the Old Testament could not fully cleanse the human conscience. Only the blood of Christ can purify our minds from the psychological and spiritual burden of guilt. Jesus, our High Priest, cleanses our consciences from that which robs us of the joy of salvation and enables us to look up towards heaven so that we may serve our living God in holiness of life.

How does today’s Gospel underline this truth?

Today’s Gospel shows the opposite example. Neither the high-priestly mission of Jesus nor His divine message is received by the Pharisees. This reveals their corrupted minds and hearts. Saint Augustine advised those who act like Pharisees today to change their thinking from “I can do this myself” to “We are all sinners in need of saving grace.” Their prejudices, pride, and disordered thoughts in their minds led them to challenge our Lord Jesus. How dare they?

Challenge 1: “You are a Samaritan and have a demon.”

They used the word “Samaritan” as an insult. The Israelites viewed Samaritans as half-breeds, heretics, and outsiders:

*Half-breeds because of intermarriage with foreigners, *heretics because they worshipped on Mount Gerizim instead of Jerusalem, and *outsiders because many of them believed the Abrahamic blessings did not apply to Samaritans. By calling Jesus both a Samaritan and demon-possessed, they attempted to discredit Him completely. It reveals the disorder of the heart and mind. Their accusation was meant to question Jesus’ lineage and orthodoxy. It echoes a kind of spiritual exclusion, racism and religious discrimination.

This happens when someone’s background is used as an insult to satisfy human pride.

Another accusation followed.

Challenge 2: “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

In their thinking, truth was limited by age, time, and human categories. They could not grasp the deeper reality revealed when Jesus declared: “Before Abraham was, I AM.” In the Hymn of the Word, expanded in Colossians 1:16, we sing the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ:  

For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.

What about us?

We have pointed out the attitudes of the Pharisees, but before our finger lands on them, let us pause and notice how the other four fingers point back toward ourselves.

What do I like to think about?
How should we use our minds?

Exercising the mind spiritually is like entering a daily retreat.

It means paying attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing within us and listening to God’s voice in the ordinary moments of life. The Fathers of the Church offered practical guidance on how to exercise the mind.

Join me this week in practising the daily mental prayer as taught by Saint Alphonsus of Liguori.
Here are a few instructions to help us renew and exercise our minds each day:

• When you wake up in the morning, before leaving your bed, raise your mind to God and offer Him all the actions of the coming day. Ask for His grace and resolve to live that day in love.
• During the day, spend a few minutes in silent meditation focused on the Passion of Christ.
• Remember and repeat one thought or one sacred word from Scripture with you throughout the day. Silently repeat in your heart that sacred word or passage that helps you remain in God’s presence.

Do not wait for strong emotions in prayer or for a fire to burn within your soul. Instead, cherish even the smallest spark you feel. If nothing comes to  your mind, repeat simple prayers such as: “My Jesus, I love you,” or “Lord, help me.”

Mental prayer is not reserved for experts or mystics. It is a path open to every Christian, because meditation on Christ’s Passion heals our fears, our wounds, and the disordered thoughts that trouble our hearts.

As we continue our journey through Lent, let us turn our minds toward the heavenly Jerusalem and contemplate the Cross of Christ in our hearts. Let us present our burdens to the Lord: our prejudices, bitter thoughts, selfish attitudes, and fears.

May Christ Himself renew our minds so that we may think, love, and live according to the mind of Christ.

Amen +