FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
18 FEBRUARY 2024
The
Season of Lent has been used for centuries to prepare Catechumens for Baptism,
Confirmation, and Eucharist. Our
Catechumens have been meeting every week for months with their sponsors,
support people, and formation teams.
Their time of formation has included catechesis, prayer, retreats, and
different methods of helping them to understand what their relationship with
Jesus Christ will look like once they are baptized.
They were
marked with ashes on Ash Wednesday. Next
Sunday, we will send them to Bishop Rhoades at Saint Matthew Cathedral for the
Rite of Election. He will elect (or
choose) them to spend these forty days as a time of Purification and
Enlightenment. Their motives for seeking
Baptism are being purified. They may
have begun the process to please a loved one.
Now, they are beginning to understand that the Lord is calling them to
the Sacraments.
Our
Scripture readings in Lent help to enlighten them about Baptism. The First Letter of Peter uses the story of
the flood to help them understand. The
first two chapters of Genesis use very simple stories written to tell a
profound truth. Everything that God
created is very good. God created humans
in his own image to be in absolute union with him. But our first parents shattered that union with
their disobedience and pride. In the
following chapters, people’s sins devastated the beauty of God’s creation. In the flood, God destroys the wicked and
washes away the corrupted world. But,
God saves eight people in the ark and gives the rainbow as a sign of his
Covenant with them (the third covenant in the center aisle of our church).
Like the
flood, the waters of baptism wash away the sins of those who are baptized. When the newly baptized people emerge from
the watery tomb, they are one with Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead on the
eighth day. They are incorporated into a
new ark: The Church, often known as the Barque of Peter. They will continue to grow in their
relationship with Jesus Christ in this boat built on the foundation of Peter’s
Profession of Faith, even though it is often tossed abound by the storms of
life.
Our
Scripture readings do not speak to our Catechumens alone. They speak to all of us, who need to hear the
message. We who are baptized have had
our sins washed away, whether they were original sin or actual sins. We were incorporated into the person of Jesus
Christ and joined the rest of the baptized in the Church, this Barque of Peter. But we have not always been faithful to our
baptismal promises. Like Peter himself,
we too often have chosen to become stumbling blocks rather than growing more in
union with Christ, the rock of our salvation.
Saint
Mark’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the dessert helps us to understand
that Lent is also about our baptism. The
Spirit drives Jesus into the desert immediately after his baptism in the
Jordan. He enters the desert not because
he needs to repent. He enters that place
of testing because he shares completely in our human nature. In the desert, the ruler of the present age
(Satan) encounters the Spirit-filled Son for the first time. Unlike his ancestors who failed their
forty-year testing in the desert, Jesus resists all temptations and continues
his battle with Satan until his final victory on the cross.
The
Spirit has led us into this forty-day Season of Lent. We may be sincere about embracing the
disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
We are off to a good start. But
we will be tested. We may fail to be
faithful to the disciplines. Even if we
fail, we can grow in an awareness of our own vulnerability and become more
convinced that we need a savior. We
cannot save ourselves. Throughout these
forty days, the Lord’s mercy will prevail, and we can renew our Baptismal
promises with the newly baptized at Easter.
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