1st Sunday of Lent (09.03.14)

At Easter, we celebrate the Resurrection – the most important feast in the Christian calendar.

Lent is a time to prepare ourselves for that great feast.

In today’s Gospel, we see Christ in the desert, struggling with the tempter.  Through prayer, fasting and fidelity to the word of God, He emerges victorious.   Before setting out to help others, He took time to prepare Himself beforehand to proclaim to the whole world the Good News of the Gospel message.

Yes, each one of us has to face temptations in our lives.  Lent provides us with a great opportunity to intensify our efforts to overcome them.   Let us reflect for a moment on our worst and constant temptation.

Through the grace of God, we too can be victorious, if we but follow His call to repentance and self-denial in order to become renewed in spirit, in love, and in service in His Name.
Perhaps we could start by setting aside even ten minutes each day for silent reflection, opening our hearts and minds to the still small voice of calm inspiring us to emerge from our hiding places into the peace of His presence, and so start the process of conversion.

In today’s first reading, we hear from the Hebrew story of genesis how man and woman, in the garden of Eden, were blissfully happy as they lived in harmony with nature and the animal kingdom, until they disobeyed the word of God by eating the forbidden fruit, after which they became conscious of their sin and were ashamed of themselves and afraid of God, so they hid.  They could no longer face God.

The first question of God in the Bible is the everlasting one: “Where are you?”    
During Lent then, the time is ripe for us to let God find us, wherever we may be on life’s journey, aware of the truth that salvation is a matter of being found by God.

St Paul, in the second reading gives us hope by telling us that “as sin entered the world by one man’s disobedience, so salvation enters the world by one man’s obedience”.  That one man is Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus comes in the name of God to “seek out and to save the lost”.  Saving is the verb of God.  Jesus is the Saviour of mankind.

However His mission to save is not free from trial.  During His preparation for preaching and teaching, Jesus is tempted to abandon trust in His Father and go the way of power and prestige and public display.
But, on the contrary, He is seen to face temptation with the power of the word of God.  He does not argue, from his own perspective at the time – “off the top of his head” – but uses the word of scripture and makes fidelity to that word the mark of his mission.  He lives by the word of God. He feeds on that word. Obedience to that word will take Him through trial and temptation to the Cross itself – the great sign of our salvation.  In Jesus’ obedience to the word of God we are saved.

Let us pray that through prayer, self-denial and attention to the word of God we may celebrate this holy season faithfully and fruitfully, and so prepare well for Easter.

Heavenly Father, in your gentle mercy, guide our efforts at renewing our lives this Lent, for we know that left to ourselves we can do nothing.  This we ask through Christ our Lord.  Amen.