First Sunday of Lent

Dominica I in Quadragesima B
18 February 2024

ACA Commitment Weekend

 The journey of Jesus into the desert always fills our hearts and minds with a vivid image to begin the Lenten season. Like our Lord, we journey with resolve to be strengthened, knowing we too will be tempted. No doubt, you have chosen something from which to fast during this season, some sacrifice, and you hope that your efforts will not only prepare you for a greater celebration of Easter, but that they will also make you a better husband or wife, a better father or mother, brother, sister, and friend. In short, you hope to be more united to Christ: to renew that Christian identity bestowed upon you at Baptism, and to be a better disciple.  We must constantly repent, renew, and be reformed.

Or, in the case of the catechumens in RCIA preparing for Baptism at the Easter Vigil, you prepare yourself to be baptized and confirmed: at once united to Christ and strengthened to be his witnesses in the world. Today, we celebrate and pray for all Catechumens and Candidates in RCIA preparing to receive these sacraments this Easter as they gather at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine this afternoon to celebrate the Rite of Election that is, to be chosen for the Easter Sacraments by Archbishop Coakley.

Yes, we begin this season with all our fervor in participating in “the yearly observances of holy Lent,” as we prayed in the Collect at the start of Holy Mass, but a question must arise in our hearts.  That question is, “Am I being ‘driven by the Spirit?”

It’s a detail that is sometimes overlooked in the Gospel, but this year as we read the brief account given by St. Mark, there’s no opportunity for dramatic demonic dialogues to overshadow the surprising fact that Jesus does not simply choose to go to the desert. Rather, we are told, he is driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit! The Gospel said, “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days.” (Mk 1:12)

At the beginning of Lent, am I being “driven by the Spirit”, like Jesus was driven into the desert? Am I taking on Lenten observances inspired by the Holy Spirit?  Was the Holy Spirit part of how I came up with my serious Lenten observances and sacrifices?  In other words, did I even pray, “Lord, what do you want from me this Lent”?  Am I desiring what Jesus desired—to follow God’s will for my life, led by the Spirit—while I face the “wild beasts” and “temptations” that fill the desert of my life?

If we want to be driven by the Spirit, we must first desire to live in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit, referenced by St. Peter in the second reading, is life in the Risen Lord, the fulfillment of the sign of God’s eternal covenant with us, prefigured by the sign of the bow in the clouds which God gives to Noah.  The covenant with Noah is fulfilled in Jesus.  His flesh is put to death by being “drowned” we might say, immersed in the “flood” of bitter suffering and crucifixion for our salvation.  But, the wood of that Cross serves as we might also say, as the ark, the instrument through which his passage lands on “the shores” of the Resurrection. Never again, we heard in that first reading, will the Lord God permit a flood to destroy all mortal beings.  And so, passing safely through the threatening “waters” of the temptations of this life is now accomplished for believers in baptism.  As we heard in the second reading, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.”  To live in the Spirit, then, means to keep this covenant, and to follow God’s ways.

The covenant cannot be kept alone, however. We must live in the Spirit as the Body of Christ, the Church! The Church connects us to Christ because the Church is the Body of Christ, by which we are joined to Christ our Head, we the members.  The Church gives us the support we need to keep the covenant, and allows his Spirit to move in and through us. But the Church, the Body of Christ, cannot support those seeking to live in the Spirit if we don’t support the Church, if we aren’t living members of the same. We all must do our part to build up the Body of Christ, the Church, ministering to her as the angels ministered to Christ.

As we journey through this Lenten season, may the wilderness within us become a sacred space for transformation. Let the love of God guide us, the teachings of the Lord direct us, and the baptismal waters renew us.

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday
14 February 2024 

This holy season of renewal in godly life begins in distinctive fashion with the imposition of ashes.  In a few moments, as ashes are imposed, you will hear the phrase: “Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”  I really love how Lent begins with that phrase because I think it is so rich, so packed, with meanings that speak to us of aspects of our faith and salvation history.

First, it speaks to us of a reminder of our creation.  That takes us to the Book of Genesis.  Man was formed from the dust of the earth and God generously blew life into his lungs.  That phrase is a reminder of mortality, and therefore the need for repentance, since we also know that the phrase comes from God’s words to Adam after the Fall.  God spoke to Adam of the consequences of sin and that he would have to labor by the sweat of his brow to provide from the land for his needs.  God said to Adam that one day he would return to dust and uses this very same phrase: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”  This serves as a powerful reminder that there is a God and we are not Him.  We bear the mortality that is a consequence of Original Sin and our personal sins.  We will face judgment and so the reminder of being dust is also a call to repentance.

But there is still even more meaning packed into that inaugural phrase of Lent.  It is not only a reminder of past creation or of the darkness of sin and mortality.  We are a people of hope.  We have hope in the Blood of Jesus in the New Covenant.  And so, this reminder of creation, automatically carries with it a reminder of re-creation.  God’s plan to save us from sin means that the Son has come in our very flesh to restore us, to redeem us, to usher in a new creation.  The phrase calls to mind at one and the same moment, both creation and re-creation.

And thus, that packed phrase, is a call to us to go deeper in our life with the Lord.  We are to repent of what keeps us bound to sin and the mortality of eternal death.  We are to live in the new creation by growing in grace and holiness.  That grace of being recreated by the Lord is something that must be seen and visible in us.  That does not mean that we live grace in order to be seen.  No.  Rather, God’s Word tells us that grace must be made visible.  In St. Paul’s Letter to Titus he writes that the grace of God “has appeared”, that is, been made visible, in Christ (cf. Ti. 3:4).  If we are living in the new creation then likewise redeemed life must be seen in us too.  It must be enfleshed in us.  Holiness must be incarnate in us, following the model of the one who made us new.  And so, Lent is a time for us to put on more fully, like clothing and vesture, the grace of redeemed life.  We are to put on the life of Christ, the New Adam, who has refashioned us for a new creation.  St. Paul writes in the Letter to the Ephesians, “put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24).

When we face all the meanings of that Lenten phrase, we know that we have divided hearts.  We fall for sin and we remain attracted to it, even though the Lord has opened for us the way to salvation.  The call of Lent is to shake off the slumber that speaks to us and keeps us living in sin, apart from God.  We are to uproot those things that are sinful.  And we need to be serious about the disciplines that will help us go deeper in our life with the Lord.  I think the words of the first reading are so appropriate for this call to avoid being superficial but to seek deeper redeemed, recreated life.  The Prophet Joel wrote the words of the Lord: “[R]eturn to me with your whole heart,… Rend your hearts, not your garments.”

Our campaign of Lent has begun.  Our spiritual weapons, both the ones highlighted in Scripture and our additional personal penances and practices, help reform our lives so that we live less in the old ways of sin according to our fallen nature and live more as the new creature in Christ according to the life of grace.