Sacred Heart Parish
1st Sunday Of Lent (B)
1.In our Gospel reading today St. Mark tells us – “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan”. This took place immediately following the Baptism of Jesus. What about ourselves? You and I, baptized in water and the Holy Spirit, are called once again by the Holy Spirit into the desert of another Lenten season. Our discipleship is once again to be put to the test as to how well we are to make preparation for the celebration of the Easter Mystery with minds and hearts renewed. What is a desert? It is a lonely place of silence and solitude. It is categorized by the absence of ordinary exchanges that constitute our everyday activities. The desert is a place where ultimate questions must be raised, where radio and television cannot affect us, where we can be alone with God – for how terrible it would be to be alone in the desert without God. A desert, of course, is real scary; it is life-threatening because food and water are in scarce supply. It is a place of temptation where we can experience our weakness, where nothing can distract us from the brokenness of our lives and, at times, from their flawed relationships. Paradoxically, the desert is the place where we can experience the real presence of God without the usual distractions. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert; Moses spent forty days in the desert – face to face with God in prayer. The prophet Elijah wandered for forty days in the desert on his journey to God’s holy mountain. And so it was with Jesus, who as the innocent lamb carried our sins into the desert. And so it is with ourselves who once again begin to share this long desert history which the Holy Spirit helps us to make our own in sacramental mystery.
2.The Latin word for Lent is “quadragesima” which means “the forty days”, a period of prayer, penance and almsgiving in preparation for Easter. The English word “Lent” comes from an Anglo-Saxon word which means “to lengthen”; thus Lent in the northern hemisphere came to mean springtime when the days began to grow longer. We in the northern hemisphere came to speak of Lent as the great springtime retreat. (Things are just the opposite in the southern hemisphere.) Lent is not an end in itself; it exists only to lead us to Easter. As we will say in our prayer to God our Father in the Preface Prayer – “Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with minds and hearts renewed. You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbor. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, you bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.”
3.Our Gospel reading today gives us the first recorded words of Jesus at the start of his public ministry: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel”. Penance means an inner-most change of heart under the word of God in the perspective of God’s kingdom. Penance means changing one’s life in harmony with such a change of heart. Penance is authentic and effective when translated into deeds and acts. Centuries ago an anonymous English author wrote what has become a spiritual classic – “The Cloud of Unknowing”. The author describes penance as having two stages and says to us – “A man looks into a mirror and sees an ugly smudge on his face. What does he do? He immediately runs to the well and washes his face.” The author says – “If this smudge be a particular personal sin, the well is holy Church and the water is the Sacrament of Penance.” In other words, one goes to the Church, confesses one’s sins with a contrite heart and receives God’s forgiveness. Careless folks neglect this sacrament for years. Many of us utilize this sacrament too infrequently. The great saints tell us we need this sacrament until death do us part. But the author of “The Cloud” keeps writing. He says – “The ugly smudge may not be any particular sin but rather something we all experience – the inclination to sin, the very root of sin, our experiencing the attraction to sin. So the imaginary person the author is describing runs to the well again. This time the well is our merciful God himself and the water is prayer and the practice of acts of penance. The Sacrament of Penance does not remove the roots of sin, our spontaneous movement towards sin. Only prayer and acts of penance are effective in this regard, the grace of the Holy Spirit who is the forgiveness of our sins. We must not think that by going to Confession all will be well, because all will not be well unless we also exercise ourselves under grace with regard to the work of penance. Penance then means both the virtue and the sacrament. The sacrament cannot do what the virtue does, and the virtue cannot do what the sacrament does. The sacrament forgives sin; the virtue attacks the root of sin. Both go together and neither can be effective apart from the other. The Lord Jesus says to us once again in this Lenten season – “Repent and believe in the Gospel”.
4.In our second reading today, the author makes an interesting comment about our first reading which tells us about Noah and the story of the flood. God pointed to the rainbow that often follows the storm and made the promise that no flood would ever devastate the earth again. God added: This is the sign I am giving for all ages to come. Our second reading tells us that the story of Noah prefigured our Sacrament of Baptism, for just as Noah’s Ark had save the faithful in his day, so Baptism saves us now. The Sacrament of Baptism is at the heart of our Lenten observance. It is the sacrament of our dying and rising with Christ the Lord. It has a two-fold connotation: it means dying to sin and inordinate self-love, and living for God and neighbor in faith, hope and love. Throughout the season of Lent in a very special way we live out in our lives this dying and rising.