FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

5-6 March 2022 - St. Lambert Parish

 

Dt 26:4-10

Rom 10:8-13

Lk 4:1-13

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        This, our First Sunday of Lent has a set of powerful Scripture Readings which make an undeniable and I would hope also irresistible statement, capable of feeding and carrying us all the way to Easter and to a much fuller faith and practice of our Catholicism. The Gospel passage from St. Luke, recounting Jesus’ 40 days of fasting and prayer in the desert, the prelude to His public ministry, says all we really need to know about rejecting Satan and walking in the footsteps of our Redeemer.

This Sunday’s readings deserve from each of us more attention even outside of Mass time. This is true also because more or less ten-minute homilies cannot be teaching sessions or long lectures; they cannot exhaust a topic or leave us with the last word on anything. It is also true because, as we know from our catechism and from our Catholic upbringing, what makes up a good Lent takes in more than the Gospel account of Jesus’ battle with Satan in the desert. There’s more to being a good Catholic and broader attention to all three readings can help us with that.

May I recommend that, if you have a subscription to Magnificat or if you have some other resource for the Sunday readings at home, you go back to them today and during this week! It would be a good Lenten practice anyway, either preparing the readings before you come to Mass or going back and reading them again at your leisure after Sunday Mass, later at home (a very good way to keep holy the sabbath!). I assure you in the particular case of this Sunday the reading and rereading of our Scripture passages will offer you a wealth to reflect upon. That being said, I hope you will pardon me if I pick out just one point to focus on in this homily here at Mass. So! Here goes!

        (Jesus) ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”

        In Luke’s Gospel that is the first of the three major temptations which Jesus endured and resisted during His forty-day fast in the desert. We note that Jesus rebuffs old Satan in absolute terms. Even so, you might say that the Lord plays it particularly cool with the devil and understates His case: “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” No shouting, no gesticulating, just very simply: “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” Obviously, the Lord Jesus is sovereign; He is in charge of the situation. Jesus’ response to the devil in St. Luke is shorter than what we read in St. Matthew where we read: “It is written, One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” That helps us to understand more, but there is something to be said for sticking to the shorter version of Jesus’ response in Luke and that is what we are going to do. “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”

        These days, in trying to follow a bit the horrendous story on the news of Putin’s Russia invading Ukraine, I have noticed that much of the political commentary on the internet is critical of American or Western foreign policy vis-a-vis this Russian attack on another sovereign nation. The question is, what to do in the face of such a great tragedy, and the claim is that to repulse the unjust aggressor economic sanctions will not be enough, as they have never worked in the past. As I say, “What to do?” Our political leaders are selling us a bill of goods pretending that economic sanctions do work. People comment that even the harshest sanctions will not be enough to make Putin back down and go home. A lot of ordinary and very poor Russians will have the higher price to pay and at least for a time at the gas pump we will too.

One reason given by way of a critique of Western values and their focus on economic sanctions would be that a goodly part of the rest of the world, unlike us, is not primarily moved by material or commercial interests. It is not that you cannot hurt people or countries and maybe bend them to your will with economic sanctions, but just depriving people of bread can never be decisive, often because their leaders will never be deprived and really don’t care about the poor and defenseless, nor do they feel themselves responsible to ordinary citizens. The flipside of this observation comes in seeing how important true patriotism is to the fight. A la David and Goliath, Russia might have an enormous advantage in terms of military arms and trained soldiers, but all those people of Ukraine and many volunteering to come back from abroad to fight are doing so not for money or a comfortable lifestyle, but out of love for the homeland, out of a truly heroic patriotism. “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” Understated perhaps, but still an eloquent statement on what is fundamentally at stake for a people, whose identity was forged back in the 2014 revolution of dignity.

        Let us switch gears and turn our attention to ourselves and to our life in Christ! As we think about the practice of Lent, or think about evangelizing, about proclaiming and spreading the Gospel, how do we get beyond “bread alone” and whatever that is supposed to mean?

        I don’t know about you, but when I do penance, I end up kind of like Peter, James, and John, they being the super-select and the three closest to Jesus from among the 12 Apostles. They are the same three who repeatedly failed the test of watching and waiting with the Lord. On Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John fell asleep. In the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus in anguish prayed and sweat blood, they snoozed off. The Evangelist says they did so out of sheer distress, but Jesus reprimanded them just the same for not being able to stay awake and watch with Him for even an hour.

         “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” I love these zealous young men, especially, who theorize about building themselves up to total fast and abstinence, like Jesus. They see it as doable and express, at least on their podcasts, their resolve to build themselves up to such a challenge, to not eating at all for 40 days, just like Our Lord. I wish them well and hope they don’t starve themselves while trying to accompany Jesus in His Temptation and His Fast, “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”

        My own advice for Lent and for life to the bold and brave among you would be to observe the moderate fasting and abstinence prescribed by the Church, starting with the one hour fast before Holy Communion and for the rest, be zealous about watching and praying. Don’t fall asleep on Jesus!

Praised be Jesus Christ!