FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
26 FEBRUARY 2023
When
the people of Israel were freed from their captivity in Egypt, God claimed them
as his own chosen people. In their
forty-year journey through the Sinai Desert, God tried to teach them how to
behave as his beloved children. But like
our first parents in the Book of Genesis, they could not bring themselves to
trust in God’s unconditional love. When
they were hungry, they complained to Moses and blamed him for leading them out
of Egypt. Time and time again, they
questioned whether they could trust God to save them. When Moses spent forty days conversing with
God on Mount Sinai, they formed a golden calf and worshipped it.
When Jesus
was baptized in the Jordan River, his Father claimed him as his own from the
heavens, “this is my beloved Son.” When
the Spirit leads him into the desert for forty days, the devil challenges him
to prove that he really is the Son of God.
Famished after fasting for forty days, Jesus refuses to use his status
as the Son of God to turn stones into loaves of bread. He knows that his mission is to save other
people, not himself. Then the devil
tempts him to throw himself from the parapet of the Temple to see whether his
Father will save him. Jesus refuses to
test whether his Father is trustworthy.
When the devil offers him instant power and success, he tells him to get
away. He refuses a shortcut. He will remain faithful as Suffering Servant,
giving his life entirely for world’s salvation.
The Spirit
has led us into this forty-day desert of Lent.
Through the waters of Baptism, we have become God’s beloved sons and
daughters. This forty-day journey
prepares our Elect to become his beloved sons and daughters when they are
baptized at the Easter Vigil. Like the
ancient Israelites, we fall into the same trap as our first parents in the
Garden of Eden. We have often fallen to
the devil’s temptation and tried to claim for ourselves those qualities that belong
only to God. In this Lenten desert, the
Lord invites us to reclaim our trust that God alone can save us. After forty days, we can more fully celebrate
the central mystery of our faith: the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ at the Sacred Paschal Triduum.
The
disciplines of Lent provide a unique structure for a more intimate encounter
with our Lord Jesus Christ. When we
fast, we begin to understand how often we have tried to satisfy our hunger for
meaning by filling ourselves with food, drink, privilege, or anything else that
cannot truly satisfy us. When we fast,
we become more aware that only God can satisfy our deepest hungers. When we pray, we realize that time spent in
prayer is not a waste of time. We become
more aware that any of our accomplishments are because of God’s grace. When we fail, it is God’s mercy that saves
us. With fasting and prayer, we become
more aware of the sufferings of so many in our world. We are more willing to share a portion of
what God has given us in almsgiving to the poor and vulnerable.
In his
forty-day time of testing in the desert, Jesus faces the ravages of the devil’s
temptations as a fully human person. He
remains faithful to his vocation as God’s only begotten Son. Odds are pretty good that we will not be so
victorious in resisting the devil’s temptations in these next forty days. I am an expert in finding excuses to break my
fast. I often cut corners and find
something more “productive” to do than pray.
I can find other uses of our money other than almsgiving. That is why it is so important for us to
journey through this Lent together. We
gather at Sunday Mass, the Tuesday night Lenten Series, and Stations of the
Cross, as well as the community building fish fry offerings on Friday night. Instead of trying to prove how strong we are
in keeping our Lenten promises, we gather as the Lord’s beloved sons and
daughters to understand more completely why we need the salvation won for us in
the Paschal Mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment