First Sunday of Lent
Lectionary: 23
Reading I
Gn 9:8-15
God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
“See, I am now establishing my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
and with every living creature that was with you:
all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals
that were with you and came out of the ark.
I will establish my covenant with you,
that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed
by the waters of a flood;
there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”
God added:
“This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come,
of the covenant between me and you
and every living creature with you:
I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign
of the covenant between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth,
and the bow appears in the clouds,
I will recall the covenant I have made
between me and you and all living beings,
so that the waters shall never again become a flood
to destroy all mortal beings.”
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
R. (cf. 10) Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior.
R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Remember that your compassion, O LORD,
and your love are from of old.
In your kindness remember me,
because of your goodness, O LORD.
R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Good and upright is the LORD,
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and he teaches the humble his way.
R. Your ways, O Lord, are love and truth to those who keep your covenant.
Reading II
1 Pt 3:18-22
Beloved:
Christ suffered for sins once,
the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous,
that he might lead you to God.
Put to death in the flesh,
he was brought to life in the Spirit.
In it he also went to preach to the spirits in prison,
who had once been disobedient
while God patiently waited in the days of Noah
during the building of the ark,
in which a few persons, eight in all,
were saved through water.
This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.
It is not a removal of dirt from the body
but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
who has gone into heaven
and is at the right hand of God,
with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him.
Verse Before the Gospel
Mt 4:4b
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
Gospel
Mk 1:12-15
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.
After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
Why did Jesus go off into the desert for forty days to be tempted by Satan? There really was no personal need for Him to do that since He is God and above all things. Satan had no power over Him and could not force Him to do anything. The reason Jesus went into the desert and was confronted by Satan is because He did it as an example for us to follow. He did it as an example of the Human Christ; the Christ that we are encouraged to encounter during The Season of Lent. Through His example it is revealed to us that Jesus feels everything that we feel. He understands our struggles, pain, and the divisions that we have within ourselves. He can relate completely to what we are experiencing even in the most challenging times in our lives. Not only does He feel what we feel but He does it because He wants to. It can be comforting to know that Jesus weeps for us and has complete empathy for what we go through in our lives. This understanding creates an opportunity for us to establish a strong relationship with Him. A friendship always grows stronger when something is experienced together. This is the same when it comes to our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Just as Jesus Christ voluntarily went out into the desert we are invited to journey out into our own spiritual desert during this Season of Lent. Through fasting, sacrifice, and meditating on our sinfulness we are able to unite ourselves to The Crucified Christ. As Christians suffering takes on a different perspective and is more than something to be avoided. It is actually something to be embraced and celebrated. The more that we suffer the closer we are able to get to Jesus Christ. Just as Christ suffered for us we can relate our suffering to Him and find relief in the fact that Jesus knows completely what we are going through. With that knowledge comes an opportunity where Jesus can take the burdens we are carrying from us. We share our burdens with Him and He shares His burdens with us. The experiences that we are going through bring ourselves into a deeper relationship with Jesus that could not be accomplished any other way. Arguably there is nothing more intense than shared suffering and Jesus Christ, through His suffering, brings this to perfection. We are encouraged to actively seek out this suffering and glorify in it when it comes with the understanding that it will end and a more powerful relationship with Jesus Christ will result; thus we becoming stronger in the process.
When the body is weakened through fasting and denying itself physical pleasures, the mind and the spirit naturally become stronger with the spirit gaining control over our thoughts. We then become more in tune with the spiritual world and Jesus Christ. Our spirituality can lift us above any type of suffering and bring us into a higher realm with our God. Suffering is a state of being which makes a Christian stronger and enables them to overcome all obstacles that separate ourselves from God. Jesus Christ becomes our greatest advocate in this area; serving as the perfect partner in all of our ordeals and whom we can trust to bring us to victory over them. This is why suffering should not be feared. Jesus Christ suffered and He conquered death. In comparison what do we have to fear if death itself has already been defeated by the one whom we have established a relationship with?
God does not lie. It is impossible for Him to do so. Throughout the existence of the universe He has made various covenants with us that built on each other to bring all of us and His creation back to perfection. It can be argued that the first was unwritten but came into being with the Creation of Man. We were created out of love to love and be loved. God will never cease from loving us. The second was with Noah and all his descendants which include us: never would the world be destroyed by water and through God there would always be an opportunity for rebirth and forgiveness. The Flood became the symbol of baptism and salvation. The third was through Abraham and the Revelation of God to the world. Through Abraham God a personal relationship with us which was established and through Abraham and his descendants. God was revealed to the world. Through Abraham the nation of Israel was established. God renewed this covenant through Moses and again through David. Finally, in this last age everything that came before, and everything that had been revealed has been brought to perfection through Jesus Christ. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, Him dying on The Cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and the promise of eternal life marks the Final Covenant and defines everything that came before through its lense. All of creation, all that was, and all that will be needs to be viewed through Jesus Christ.
When Jesus died on The Cross it affected everything. He is present throughout eternity and so is the Crucifixion. That is why the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden is viewed by Christians as the Cross of Christ. To understand creation, the universe, and ultimately God one must know Jesus Christ first. One of the first steps in this relationship is to get to know the Human Christ who is the Suffering Christ. This is the overarching theme of Lent: There is suffering in the world, Christ suffered for us, we suffer, and we become closer to Jesus as a result of the suffering. When we suffer Christ suffers. When Christ suffers we suffer. Through suffering we become closer to Jesus and we become stronger. When the suffering is endured and overcome then the Resurrected Christ is realized. Just like the storm which brings rain and fruit to the vine so will our suffering produce fruit and a rich harvest. With this in mind it can be expected that Lent, with its suffering theme, will bring out the biggest of harvests.
Deacon Tom
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
As the earth was cleansed in the waters of the flood, so were we cleansed of Original Sin through our baptism and were claimed by Christ. We became new creations and our birthright as Children of God was recognized. During this Season of Lent, we are encouraged to meditate on this fact more closely and ask ourselves how we should let this knowledge influence our spiritual life. Recognizing our special status enables us to build on a foundation of faith, hope, and love that has been preconfigured by God through Jesus Christ. This should be viewed as a wonderful opportunity to structure our lives around our relationship with Jesus Christ and constantly make it better. Even more, going forward, we can be comforted with the fact that whenever we make a mistake or when the structure becomes weak, the foundation established through our baptism always remains strong as long as realize that it is in place.
Jesus’ words in the Gospel Reading today are strong and profound:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
The time of fulfillment is the Word Becoming Flesh which is the Incarnation. The Kingdom of God is Jesus himself. His baptism by John had just occurred forty days prior and with it came the full revelation of the Holy Trinity. Now, in this passage, Jesus commences with His ministry, telling everyone in the world what we have to do. Included in this is repentance which was first proclaimed by John the Baptist. It means having true remorse for our past sins. With this remorse comes a commitment to change our past behaviors which threaten our relationship with Jesus. This repentance, for it to have its desired effect, must be continuous. There should be a constant examination of our conscious through prayer and reflection. Through repetition comes familiarity. Through familiarity comes a deeper relationship with Jesus. We can then see the difference between our old self and our new selves.
Every day brings a new opportunity through Jesus Christ. When we lay down to sleep He is with us. When we wake up He is there. He never abandons us. He died for us so that we might be led to God. It is a powerful affirmation for us that He who is everything gave everything for us and in return asked for nothing except our love. This is only the beginning of the relationship. Consider what more is in store for us if Jesus started this relationship between us and Him with His own death. This alone should make us feel special. Yet, there is so much more for us to receive if only we be receptive to it. A way to do this is by stripping ourselves down to the foundation that Jesus built for us and to not be afraid of rebuilding everything again. Thoughtful prayer, worship, and a dedication to Sacred Scripture will bring about an abundance of fruit. Acts of charity adds to the harvest. Through the Journey of Lent we will then encounter the Crucified Christ walking His Passion as we endure own. We can be encouraged by the fact of what lies beyond that: The Easter Joy and our redemption.
Deacon Tom
Just as Jesus entered the desert for a period of forty days, we have now followed into our own spiritual desert with the beginning of the Season of Lent. Here, amidst nothingness, we are encouraged to examine our faith and relationship with God all the while focusing on the Crucified Christ, the Christ who suffered, the Christ who was crucified, and the Christ who died so that all of us would obtain eternal life. That is Christ’s longing for us: salvation and happiness through a relationship with him.
We must take this opportunity to envelop ourselves within our faith and live our faith every moment of our existence. The world around us must be pushed away until only Christ remains. Then we can experience the true effect of his presence. He has always been with us; it is us in our supreme arrogance that has forgotten him. In the past, we have tried to convince ourselves that happiness can be achieved without him. This has left us empty and suffering; truly in a hopeless desert. But the desert we seek is different. It is one which offers an oasis of eternal water and eternal life. This we will only have to seek. And as long as we seek it, it will definitely be found
Through the sufferings of the Great Flood, God offered all of us a Covenant of forgiveness and love. Water was used as a symbol of cleansing and our own baptism. We are encouraged to meditate on this during Lent: God promises us forgiveness and love, not destruction. He has not revealed himself so as to destroy us but to rebuild us in his own image with a revelation of our birthright: Children of God.
Those who rebuked God in their ignorance suffered greatly just as many of us have when we turned away from God. Yet, even those who apparently had no chance at salvation and were representative of evil were welcomed into the Kingdom of God through the sufferings and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The First Letter of Peter offers an amazing description of how Christ descended into Hell to give instruction and salvation to all those who came before with those who perished in the flood being specified directly. Each of us is as important to God and can look forward to help and reassurance from him; if only we accept what he is offering and take that first step into the desert to truly find him as he calls to us.
In our desert we must turn to prayer, fasting, and acts of charity to understand our relationship with Christ. Through this understanding we can experience his love. The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ is essential to this understanding. We must walk the Passion with him; taking up our own crosses and walking beside him. To know him is to become like him in our sufferings and acts of love. We suffer by fasting and going without while we perform Acts of Charity to express love. We then naturally remove all the clutter and obstacles that we have put in our lives which has blurred the true presence of Christ.
Let us go forward together, onward to Calvary. We are all united in the suffering as one community. Because of this, we must help each other in the very same way. Unified suffering creates unified love.
My sisters and brothers in Christ,
Part of Lent is deepening our awareness that we people who have a Covenant with the Living God. We are not just people who believe in God. We are a people sought out by God, a people formed by God and a people with a special love relationship with God. Only when we are deeply aware of His love for us can we truly begin to do penance in a Christian way.
The first reading today is from the Book of Genesis and recounts the establishment of the Covenant with Noah and his descendants. Many times in the history of the Chosen People, God has made Covenants. These Covenants mark important events in the life of the Chosen People and are a sign of God’s choosing this people and remaining faithful to His choice. What happens always is that God remains faithful to the Covenant and we do not. Yet we are called to look back at these Covenants and to let God change our faithlessness to faithfulness.
The second reading today is from the First Letter of Peter. This portion of the letter refers us once again to the Covenant with Noah and explains even more clearly that we must return to faithfulness. The letter points out that it is Christ who has died for our sins and that we cannot think that the death of Christ was simply a removal of dirt from the body. Rather the death of Christ our consciences are made clean by our faith in Him. Thus we are invited to choose Jesus Christ once again in this time of Lent and know that He is our salvation.
The Gospel of this First Sunday of Lent is always the Gospel of Christ in the Desert, the temptations of Christ fasting for forty days. The account this year comes from the Gospel of Mark and is very, very short. Saint Mark simply tells us that Jesus was in the desert forty days and was tempted and that angels ministered to Him. When Jesus leaves the desert, he begins His ministry of preaching. He preaches repentance and belief in the Good News of God.
We are invited to see that Lent is a time of Good News of God. Lent is a time to believe more deeply in this God who loves us and comes to save us in every situation. Lent is a time to listen attentively to the Word of God and to meditate on what this Word means in our lives. We are invited to turn away from anything that misleads us and walk always the way of the Lord.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
Lent is a time of knowing more profoundly God’s love for us. The purpose of any good works that we do in Lent is to open our hearts more completely to God’s love. Just as the Book of Genesis reminds us once more that we have a covenant with God and God has a covenant with us, so also today’s Gospel recalls that covenant between God and us. The Kingdom of God is the expression of this sacred covenant.
When today’s Gospel tells us to repent and believe in the gospel, we need to be aware that the phrase could not mean at all the written gospel, because it did not yet exist. When our Scriptures refer to the Gospel, it can be translated as the Good News. The good news is that God has chosen to send His only Son into the world so that we can have life through that Son. That is Good News.
God loves us. That is Good News. God forgives us. That is Good News. God invites us to share His life. That is Good News. No matter how often we refuse God’s invitation, He continues to invite us. That is good News. No matter how often we sin, God is willing to forgive us. That is Good News.
Lent is not about thinking we are bad and beating ourselves up. It is about know that God loves us and invites us to know the Good News and to live it. It is always invitation and never condemnation.
In Lent we are invited to do penance, to change our lives, to believe in the Good News. This can be and should an absolutely joyful experience because we know that we are preparing for the joy of celebrating Christ’s Resurrection.
Let us embrace the small discipline of Lent so that our hearts will rejoice even more as we celebrate Christ’s Resurrection at Easter, the great Passover, the great event of all history, which unites us to the Divine Love.
CHRIST IN THE DESERT MONASTERY
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