First Sunday of Lent
I began Lent in right earnest. Ash Wednesday was a great day and so was Thursday. Friday, I put my heart and soul into the mission preparation, into writing my homily for the weekend and worked with the office staff to tidy up the place for the archbishop’s visit this weekend. By one o’clock I was ravenously hungry. I looked into the refrigerator and found left over food from the weekend. I did not think too much of what I was eating and inhaled the food. When the staff asked me what I had had for lunch, like lightening, it hit me. Darn it, it was Friday and I had just gobbled down the left over rice and meat. You should have seen their faces;, but of course, they said that the look on my face was even better. So much for beginning Lent in right earnest. The irony of all this lay in the fact that I was actually writing my homily on the temptations of Christ in the desert.
On this the first Sunday of Lent, clearly, the first reading and the gospel reading are meant to parallel each other. I am struck by the contrast and the similarities between the two scenes. First, the first man and woman were in a delightful garden of plenty. Christ, on the other hand was in a desert, in a dry and parched land. Second, the man and woman in the garden had each other for company. Jesus, on the contrary, was alone in the desert. Third, as God saw it, the world was still good and untainted by evil. The world, in the first reading, was a delight to look at. The world in which Jesus found himself in the desert, on the other hand, was a world in dire need of redemption. Here is the crucial similarity between the readings. Both the garden and the desert became the battle ground for the eternal strife between good and evil. Today, just as in the first human beings and in Jesus, this strife continues in our own lives. These fourty days of Lent will heighten our awareness of this strife within us. These fourty days will remind of the price that was paid to redeem us from this strife. These fourty days will take us beyond strife, thanks be the Jesus Christ.
Let me offer three practical implications for today:
1. Become aware of the potential for evil in us. In both the readings, evil is personified. In the first reading, evil comes in the form of a serpent. In the gospel reading, evil is named, Devil. Perhaps, this is Scripture’s way of giving evil a face and a name. In our daily lives, though, I wonder if this is our experience. I have not seen a serpent come and tempt me neither has the Devil appeared to me. But there is no doubt that evil is real. For me, evil is the potential for godlessness within me. For me, the power of Evil is not so much outside me, but rather, inside of me. During this Lent, I would like to be aware of my potential for evil inside of me. I think of my potential for pride, my capacity for arrogance, my weakness for spiritual discipline, my desire for control and my faith in my own abilities. These are my serpents. These are my devils. As this first practical implication, I invite you to become aware of your own potential for evil. When you give it a name and a face then you know what you are dealing with.
2. Become aware of God in us. Even as we become aware of our potential for evil, we must recognize that there is greater reality at work in us – the grace of God. Like Christ, this Lent, I would like to become more deeply aware of God. When Jesus became aware of the human potential for evil, he allowed the God within him to take greater control of his being. His retort to the Devil is significant: “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus’ word gives me a fabulous tool to keep God in the very center of my being. I invite you to do everything to become deeply aware of the divine presence in us. This Lent, devour the word of God. If possible make it for mass each day. Let the Lenten devotions and spiritual exercises do to you what fasting did for Christ. Let God become and undisputed center of your life. If at the end of Lent we do not find God, what use would be all our Lenten practices?
3. Find practical ways to live God’s redemption in our lives. Four days into Lent, I am sure that each one of us has a Lenten resolution. On Shrove Tuesday, the parish staff got together and came up with our own list of resolutions. We did not stick to the ordinary. We decided to go deeper. The idea is to keep each other on track. If you have a resolution, it is my suggestion that we connect it in some way to the redemption that Christ brought to us. Otherwise, you will end up like I did last Friday. In other words, if all we do for lent is to give up things without becoming aware of our potential for evil, without becoming more aware of God’s presence in our lives, without realizing the price Christ paid for us, without connecting our lives to the redemption story, then Easter will find us unprepared to celebrate the resurrection of Christ; then we would have not lived these fourty days in the manner that Christ lived it.
Let me conclude with this thought. “Man does not live by bread alone…,” Jesus said. On the other hand, we do live on bread alone; the bread that Christ gave to us as his own self. As we share in the bread that is Christ, may we let our fourty days of Lent make us more like Christ. Amen.
- Fr. Satish Joseph