The First Sunday of Lent (Year B)
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.
-Mark 1:12-13
Did you know that our word “Lent” comes from the Old-English word for “springtime”?
This gives us a wonderful insight into what the days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday are all about: a season when faith and the virtues of the Christian life grow and flower within our hearts and souls. But, as Ash Wednesday approaches each year, one of the first questions we Catholics ask is “What should I give up for Lent?” And it’s a fair question because, as we know, penance is a part of Lent.
However, Lent isn’t only about doing penance. So, we have to think of other opportunities for “good works” during the Lenten Season.
In all of this, however, we never want to lose sight of the fact that Lent is, above all, a season of mercy which is always leading us to the promise of Easter Light and Life. These are blessed days when we are given an opportunity to get back to the basics of the Christian life, focusing on what is most important.
When Lent begins each year, I always remember a quotation from the English Catholic novelist, Graham Greene, who wrote, “You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God” (from Brighton Rock).
Lent is the time when we, as Church, pause to reflect on the reality of that mercy. And, when weighed against human standards—when we compare it to what we might think of as “mercy”—God’s mercy is appallingly strange because it costs us so little: God loves us and God asks only that we give ourselves over to his love and mercy.
For most of us, this process of “surrender” is one which unfolds gradually over the course of a life of prayer, service, struggle, and even setbacks. However, we all know too well that the temptation to choose our own way and will over God’s is never far away. And, sadly, we can see the results—the consequences—of selfish or self-centered choices all around us.
This brings us back to these Lenten days: this call to surrender to God’s mercy that is at the heart of Lent and the entire Christian life.
Saint Mark’s account of the temptations of Jesus (which we hear proclaimed on this First Sunday of Lent) doesn’t have the details that we find in the other gospels. Despite this, the temptations of Jesus remind us that the life of a disciple includes contending with the mysterious tug of evil. Just like Jesus, we can be tempted to temporarily shift our focus—perhaps, even just for a moment—from God’s promises, in order to attend to our own wants or needs or priorities.
“Christ in the Desert” by Ivan Kramskoi (1872)
When this happens, we risk losing our awareness of God’s presence and action in our lives, choosing to focus instead on quick-fixes and self-medication by placing undue focus on food, possessions, pleasure, comfort, reputation and other relationships.
In her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Kathleen Norris writes about teaching the psalms to young children. She shares that she believes that kids have a special ability to relate to the psalms, because the psalms—spiritual poems and songs—are filled with very human emotions, ranging from joy, hope, and thankfulness to sadness and even anger. As part of this work, she will often have the children write their own psalms and poems, and she loves the raw emotion and truth these little psalmists share.
Norris writes:
Once a little boy [who was picked on by his older siblings] wrote a poem called “The Monster Who Was Sorry.” He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes “Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.”
“My messy house” says it all: with more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out.
She continues:
If that boy had been a novice in the fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on the way toward repentance, not such a monster after all, but only human. If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might dwell?
This brings us back to Lent and that “appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
Lent ultimately reminds us that holiness is possible for us only when we enter into the struggle. As Pope Francis has reminded us in his Message for Lent 2024: As disciples of Jesus, we have been called to follow the one who was tempted in the desert, and so, for us, “the desert is the place where our freedom can mature in a personal decision not to fall back into slavery.” Whatever darkness, challenges, or temptations we may encounter in the desert will not overtake us, as long as we refuse to accept anything less than God’s love and mercy.
Grant, almighty God,
through the yearly observances of holy Lent,
that we may grow in understanding
of the riches hidden in Christ
and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the First Sunday of Lent
