Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Today's Mass Readings

In today's first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, the Lord explains that His Word does not return without fulfilling its mission. He employs the analogy of rain and snow never returning without watering the earth. This is not a random analogy. As the Lord mentions in this passage, rain nourishes the ground, making it fertile and fruitful. So too, God's Word produces fruit where it goes. This is an especially appropriate reading for the first week of Lent, because Lent is one long season where we hope the Lord will nourish us with His Word. We often think of Lent as a dry desert. Indeed, Lent is patterned on the Israelites' wandering in the wilderness. Like the Israelites' wandering, Lent is a time of testing and trials, and a time of penance. What I think we often fail to emphasize is how the Israelites' wandering was an opportunity to be nourished by the Lord. Penances too are ways ofo pening up one's life to spiritual fruitfullness, like the opening and plowing of a field for preparing the soil to produce a bountiful harvest. After the seeds are planted, water is needed.

We too need the fruitful waters of God's Word. We receive this water and the seeds when we spend time in prayer, when we read and meditate upon Scripture, and especially at the Mass where we receive God's Word from both tables, in Scripture and in the Eucharist.

The penances we undergo during Lent, the special focus on prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, are opportunities to prepare ourselves, our soil as it were, for the seeds God is planting in our lives during this season, and for the water he gives us now, and even more abundantly in the Easter season to follow. This Lent, let's make the most of the season to really be open to God's Word at work in our lives.

- Jeff Morrow