FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
Last Wednesday, when we were signed with ashes, we formally entered into the season of Lent. Though the liturgical seasons of the Church highlight the mysteries of the life of Christ, they also reflect the dynamism and the movement of our own lives.
In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus was in the desert. In the biblical and spiritual tradition, the desert or the wilderness is a place of solitude and reflection, a place where God made his covenant with Israel, but at the same time, it is also a place where the Chosen People were tested in their faithfulness to Yahweh and where they repeatedly failed. Since the desert is a place where one is stripped of what is comfortable and survival becomes the primary concern, the human person is once again
reoriented to consider only the things that are truly essential. If Lent is a spiritual wilderness experience, then it calls us to strip ourselves of those things that have overpowered and overwhelmed us in our day to day life that, in the final analysis, are just litter and unimportant. This “de-cluttering” is what we call fasting, our spiritual detoxification so that at Easter we are once again reborn and renewed into the original person that God has willed and envisioned us to be. Lent is not just a break or a pause from those things that we consider mundane and unimportant, but rather a period of transformation that leads to spiritual rebirth that does not want to go back to a life of sin and dissipation. If one takes this seriously, then fasting moves us to generosity (the aim of almsgiving as a spiritual component of Lent). A person who genuinely understands his or her essence and call after a period of “de-cluttering” will not fail to realize that he/she is called to service. When we speak of almsgiving as a Lenten practice, it transcends material giving. It speaks of a deliberate gaze on the other person as a subject of God’s love, thus inviting us to treat the other as we would treat ourselves. Both fasting and almsgiving would only be authentic if they are rooted in prayer. Prayer has a dual function in our Lenten practice: it is the source of a genuine fasting and almsgiving, but also an end result of the two practices. A person who de-clutters (fasting) is led and moved to a compassionate and merciful act towards the other (almsgiving) will necessarily encounter himself or herself in a profounder relationship with God (prayer). It is my ardent prayer and hope that this season of Lent will bring about a vigorous and joyful
transformation in our relationship with God, with others and with our own selves.
– Fr. Cary