Sunday March 9, 2003
First Sunday of Lent
Saint Frances of Rome

 

Readings:

 

Genesis 9:8-15: God’s covenant with Noah after the flood

1 Peter 3:1-22: The water of the flood prefigured baptism

Mark 1:12-15: The preparation and the proclamation of the Good News

 

In the first reading, the alliance with the one whom had “found favor with Yahweh” because he was “a good man and blameless … for he walked with God” is going to seal the new creation. This alliance is presented to us with several characteristics: it’s God’s initiative and it’s eternal, it is being made not only with Noah but also with the cosmos, the rainbow will be God’s reminder of this commitment. God ratifies his mercy in his relationships with humanity and expects in return the good attitudes of Noah. The waters of the flood are the same as in baptism, permitting that God through the spirit ratifies the alliance and renews our lives from the social chaos in which we were born. God simply permits that the waters do not drown us, and instead, like Noah, we are able to survive with ideas of justice, goodness, and fidelity to God and to our brothers and sisters.

 

In the second reading, the apostle invites a community worn out by suffering and persecution to persevere in the faith. Christ is the reason for resisting because we have been saved by his suffering and death. Noah is mentioned in baptismal code, that is, it permits us to enter the way of salvation. We find here a clear baptismal catechesis of the primitive Christian communities.

 

The first thing in the Gospel reading that captures our attention is the attitude of the spirit that “drove” Jesus into the desert. This Jesus who in the previous story was “officially” included in the Most Holy Trinity when he receives the Spirit come down from heaven and is proclaimed by God as the beloved Son (Mark 1:11), is now presented in his human nature, to test in the desert his fidelity to his Father’s project in face of the temptations of the Devil.

 

The forty days is a symbolic number which signify a time of testing, of tempting, of having one’s conscience formed so that the Reign of God can be proclaimed. This is seen in the forty days of the flood, the forty years wandering in the desert before entering into the promised land, the forty days and nights of Moses on Sinai writing down the ten commandments, the forty days that Elijah walked in the desert (1 Kings 19:8), the forty years that the Philistine domination lasted over Israel (Judges 13:1).

 

Different from Matthew and Luke, Mark does not specify the content of the temptations nor mention the fasting. The presence of the angels announces the victory of the one who, in the midst of the desert risks all for God’s project. The end of the forty days does not signify the end of Jesus’ temptations. His whole life was a constant struggle against a Satan who puts up obstacles to his mission.

 

All of our lives are also a desert in the midst of which the evil project which takes flesh in selfishness, indifference, injustice, imposition or intolerance … separate us from God’s project, and these expressions of gentleness, understanding, tolerance and commitment … which are so needed in out families and among our brothers and sisters.

 

Let us remember that in the degree that we overcome the obstacles we will feel the angels who nourish our mission of each day. This struggle in the desert requires strong and determined awareness, because the lukewarm and weak consciences are used by the evil one to make us corrupt accomplices in the projects that generate injustice, violence and death.

 

After his time in the desert, Jesus goes to Galilee to begin his public ministry, proclaiming that which will be the meaning of his existence in history: to announce the Good News of the Reign. The evangelist resumes this project in four formulas:

 

the time of fulfillment is at hand, we must proclaim the kairos, the time is ripe, this is the moment, here and now, of the urgent mission.

 

The Reign of God is near. The walking presence of Jesus certifies it. It is a new free offer of God to all humanity.

 

Change your ways. Conversion means to change your direction or your goal in order to return to God. Therefore conversion is not that looking to the past but rather looking forward, to the new things that he Lord brings us every day.

 

Believe in the Good News, which is a positive, joyous, hope-filled and firm attitude before the person and the mission of Jesus. Conversion and faith are the responses that God expects to his offer of the Kingdom. With Jesus’ announcement of the Reign of God, he reaffirms and updates the alliance of God with the chosen people.

 

This Lent is a good time to review the terms of our contract with God, and to fill us so full of the love of God and of our brothers and sisters, that we are able to come out, victorious, from our daily desert.

 

For Personal Consideration:

 

We have just begun Lent. What does this mean for me? Perhaps I can give it a very personal, different sense, that I would wish it to have. I have room for originality and creativity. What am I going to do?

 

For the Group's Consideration:

 

If the Gospel had not stated very clearly that Jesus suffered temptations, many Christians would have said that he could not have felt them, because he was simultaneously God. But would a human person who could not feel temptations be truly human? What are the implications of this for our understanding of Jesus’ humanity?

 

Mark does not spell out what temptations Jesus felt. The other evangelists point them out in the manner of archetypes. Let us recall what they were and what fundamental signification they have.

 

In the current situation of our hemisphere and our world, what could we say are the three principal temptations that every human being and every Christian have to face?

 

The Gospel of Mark that we proclaim today includes the “first sermon of Jesus”, his first preaching, or if you wish, a kind of “manifesto”, his “proclamation”, which in a way resumes everything that will be his message. Mark presents us with a very synthetic and precise text.

 

If the Alliance with Abraham rightfully includes the three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), the alliance made by God with Noah can be seen to include perhaps the humanity of all religions and even nature itself. If God is God, and if God is one, what do the many diverse religions signify for us? If the theme of pluralism and dialogue is currently being promoted by the theologians, what information do we have on this matter? Who, how and when can we be informed?

 

Study a lesson of a course on religious pluralism and comment on it with your group. (If you read Spanish, you can find one at http://servicioskoinonia.org/teologiapopular).

 

For the Prayer of the Faithful:

 

For the community of believers in Jesus, that we may, in midst of life’s desert, be capable of building up people’s hope of achieving full liberation, we pray to the Lord.

 

For the entire human community, that in the midst of its selfishness and injustice and its lack of solidarity, it will know how to listen to and put into practice the messages of liberation that continue to be announced to our world, we pray to the Lord.

 

For those who suffer in their own flesh the scourge of hunger, strikes, violence, injustice, or exploitation, that hope will be reborn as they encounter persons who support them and struggle with them for their rights, we pray to the Lord.

 

For all believers, that our condition of being baptized will impulse us to live a new kind of life, as children of the God of Life and of all living people and things, we pray to the Lord.

 

For our community, that it make a strong effort to build a society that is every day more and more fraternal and filled with hope, we pray to the Lord.

 

Community Prayer

 

God our Creator; as we begin this Lent we ask you to help us make an authentic and strong effort to achieve an authentic conversion of our hearts and our personal and community life, at the same time as we work to transform out families, our society and the world. We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.