First Sunday of Lent

Lent is the Old English word for the season of spring.  I would propose that Lent is a time for our hearts to know new life, the life that comes from our relationship with Jesus Christ.  Forty days stretch ahead of us.  These forty days invite us to recognize seeds of new growth waiting to burst forth.  Today we heard two different stories, each about events that lasted for forty days.  The first was the conclusion of the story of Noah and the rains that fell for forty days; the other is Mark’s brief account of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness.

The story of the flood was written for a people in exile, a people who knew what it meant for chaos to invade their lives.  They had seen their homeland destroyed and their loved ones murdered.  They also knew that they had brought this on themselves.  They had turned away from God who had called them to be God’s people and had invited them to an intimate relationship.  The book of Genesis was put together at this time of exile.  On the final day of creation, God had declared, “Very good!”  This same God, after generations of watching wickedness take over in human hearts, regretted making humankind.  God decided to wipe out all life from the earth.

Now this might sound harsh, but there are times when, even now, I can understand God getting fed up with us.  Recent tragic events in our world could make God grieve.  Religious persecution, forced conversion and martyrdom are distressingly current.  Pope Francis has frequently inveighed against the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.  I could understand God being tempted to do a replay of the Noah story.

But “Noah found favor with the Lord,” we are told in the story.  God spoke the words we heard today: “I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth.”  The story of Noah and the flood is the story of a second spring coming to the earth.

The baptism of Jesus was the beginning of a more definitive springtime in our world.  The Spirit had descended on Jesus, and a voice had claimed him as “Son.”  Immediately after this, Mark tells us that “the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.”  Mark’s account is very brief.  His emphasis is clear: just as Israel was tested for forty years, Jesus was tested for forty days.  In the end, we have Jesus presented as a new Adam.  Chaos is ended; the original order is restored.

The season of Lent presents us with a forty-day period, a time for a new springtime to come upon our own hearts.  Lent calls us to move beyond the chaos of our inner turmoil toward the peace that is the gift of the risen Lord.  We move toward the paschal Triduum, the three most solemn days in the year, when we celebrate the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the new life available to us when we live out that great mystery of our faith. 

We move toward the moment at Easter when we will renew our baptismal promises: “Do you renounce Satan?  And all his ways? And all his works?”  “Do you believe in God the Father?  in Jesus Christ?  in the Holy Spirit?”  We get forty days to work up to a strong affirmation that continues to define our lives as Christians.   

Lent is equally a time to examine whether a few no’s in our lives might flush out some of the gunk that blocks up the flow of grace into our hearts.  Lent, then, can be approached as a time for discernment.  It might not sound like much fun, but with the help of the invited Spirit, driving us ever more urgently into the wilderness, it is possible that this coming Easter will truly be another spring, bringing renewed life into our hearts and our parish.

Paul A. Magnano

Pastor