First Sunday of Lent 3/9/25

1st rdg Dt 26:4-10 giving God first fruits

psalm 91 Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble

2nd rdg Rom 10:8-13 the word is near you, in mouth & heart

gospel Lk 4:1-13 temptation of Christ

Jesus takes upon himself all we have to be confronted with as Luke recounts the temptations Jesus experienced as he is led by the Spirit into the desert. Moses and Paul offer instructions on what it means to be a believer. We begin Lent understanding it doesn’t mean we have to go and look for difficulties or find harshness to be pleasing to God. Lent invites us to live in the truth of how easy it is to have a divided heart and calls us to be resolute with Jesus in living for God. Notice how Jesus meets each of the temptations being presented with a scripture response, with God’s holy Word. In the second reading at Vigils this morning we heard God has an unfailing love for sinners.

Monastic living washes us over with scripture again and again – 7 times a day we gather together and pray with scripture so as to be infused with the Word. Temptations will come. How do we meet them? As believers, with Jesus we draw on revelation to meet the moment. One doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. The juggle is living life preferring God to whatever momentary gratification or pleasure is being offered to us.

Lent annually provides us with a time to renew ourselves in being very deliberate about living for God. And the example of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days, informs how we enter these 40 days. It isn’t an ‘OK God now get ready, this is what I’m gonna do for you’. It’s a careful seeking in prayer to understand the promptings of the Spirit, who is leading us forward in this time, that the remembrance of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection will shed light on the choices we make as we live the daily experiences that unfold for us in the day to day.

Jesus didn’t enter the desert looking for the devil, looking for a fight. We don’t begin the day looking for the devil or looking to fight. We live each day as a blessing God has given us filled with possibilities for receiving the goodness and grace God is always making available and welcoming the opportunities to bring God’s goodness to others. As Moses instructs them in Deuteronomy – express your gratitude for all the goodness. Let the gratitude be converted from words to behavior. Paul encourages the Romans to understand that God’s Word – God’s presence – is with them always. As we cultivate the awareness of God present with us and within us, the desire to be pleasing to God deepens and our choices express in our behaviors that we are first believers – people of faith – whose identity is evident in the way we conduct ourselves. Monastic living is not a costume drama but the living out of our faith in a way that is clearly evident to those around us. And hopefully others want to join us in living for God – living lives that are pleasing to God and that spread Jesus’ kingdom.

This past Saturday morning these words of Blessed Guerric of Igny were read at Vigils: We are daily burned by our strictness of life, as by a purifying fire, and woe to us if we are not cleansed thereby of our iniquities. However, why should I fear? We have many consolations and we know we are being purified and made more fully spiritual. We shall be truly happy if we recognize our wretchedness and grieve over it in longing for the Lord, and for an all-consuming love of Him. We need not fear if we always live in reverence for the Lord and if we walk in caution and love.

We enter this season grateful to belong to a community of believers who are deliberate in encouraging and supporting each other in the life of faith. May our faith deepen as Lent unfolds so that we become more and more like Christ who resisted temptation and emerged from his 40 days to walk a path of service and sacrificial love.