Homily from the Parish Priest for the First Sunday in Lent
Readings for Year B: Genesis 9:8-15; I Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15
“I’m not ready for Lent this year”. A refrain I’ve heard a few times in the past week. And not surprisingly I have to say. “We’ve been going through a long Lent”, I hear often. And yet, despite, in the midst of, this time of pandemic the Church’s cycle of feasts and fasts and seasons goes on. The seasons of the heart go on amid the anxiety, frustration, suffering, grieving, which form the prevailing mood, which shapes our changing way of life, ways of relating, ways of thinking and feeling, ways of praying. The Church’s year goes on, there in a sense as a prop, a crutch, unchangeable, and yet our feasts and fasts take on new dynamics as we as a pilgrim people are led forward by the God who is always there, surprising us as he creates, provides, heals, is forever present in the midst of it all.
And so the Son of God enters into our personal and collective desert, led there freely, and he grapples – he engages with – he does whatever is the experience of our human nature - with his own calling to be obedient to the Father’s will for him, why he is here, and the choice between the world’s values and the values of the Kingdom he came to establish on earth.
And so as we enter into this sacred season of Lent we are called to follow him there again – to spend some time reflecting above all on who we are – why we are here – and what the Lord is calling us to do. What maybe he is calling us on to as we stand at the brink of this change of era much heralded by Pope Francis whose lead at this time is inspiring us to respond to the call to go into the desert with Jesus to dream a future which our faith teaches us is full of great hope. This could be a time to recommit do a daily exam of conscience – how do I treat others, how do I respect our planet, how do I work or study, how do I live my life honestly and transparently. And as part of this, because we are human, we are body and soul, to show some physical concrete expression of our inner journey: to deny ourselves some bodily pleasures. And to show it too in turning outwards to our neighbour – as for the Lord the desert leads him to avoid the temptation to think my mission is all about me and my glory and my power; no, it is a call to be for others. It is about the proclamation of the Kingdom of God; the reign of God on Earth.
For me personally Lenten observance is a full expression of how as Catholics we have an incarnate faith – because God became a man we have a God who shares all with us except sin itself. He is not a God who is somehow removed from our experience, a distant deity who calls the shots in the order of creation or represents pure spirit which we are called to attain. No, he is real, fully human, flesh, bones, soul, mind, heart. He has been in all our own personal deserts and felt the pain and the pleasure, the sorrow and the joy.
Where is this God in my life and how do I follow him more closely? This Lent he calls us to take stock, to be honest about who we really are, to recognize our own high calling, to fulfill ourselves in our own divine destiny as human beings made in his image. And that call from Our Lord himself to go into his desert comes out of his passionate desire for us in a love which leads to the sacrifice of one’s very self for one’s beloved. He calls us like him to allow our own desire to be as fully human as we can be to be transformed, to begin anew, to seize the moment and rebuild our world and our Church.
And wherever we are in our lives we can always strive that our desires are transformed into more selfless loving. We can always love more as Christ did because, inheriting original sin, we regularly miss the big picture and turn in on ourselves. If you’re anything like me you realise we do that all the time. We can always give more time to loved ones, be less self-serving at work, more aware of the world and its needs, a world where the gap between rich and poor has grown so much greater through this pandemic, a world which is still being plundered the inevitable consequence of which will rob our descendants of our common home, planet earth. But the good news is God is calling us back as he has always called his people back. And if we desire to be like him the Holy Spirit will lead us out of the desert too and move our desires too to be transformed more closely into the perfect love he bestowed on us in the gift of his very self he freely chose to offer on the cross, that gift we celebrate in the Eucharist as once more we embrace that greatest mystery of our faith.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ