1st Sunday of Lent

          Of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), Mark is by far the shortest.  It has a kind of cutting simplicity to it.  It gets right to the point.  And so, very often the passages we read from Mark’s Gospel are like today’s passage: very brief, relatively free of detail or literary flourish, and yet they “pack a wallop.”  For this reason, if you resolved to try to spend some more time reading the Bible during this Lenten season, I would recommend you start with Mark’s Gospel, because of its brevity, its accessibility and its potency.  Also, we happen to be in the “year of Mark” in three year cycle of the Lectionary, so it’s a good way to prepare for and follow along with the Sunday Gospel readings.

          In the passage we heard today we have the preparation for and beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.  Up until now, He has been something of an unknown (thirty years in his home town of Nazareth), but then He is baptized by John in the Jordan (just before today’s passage).  And as we read in the Gospel today:  He is driven by the Holy Spirit out into the dessert; He returns and begins to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom and the need for repentance.  He begins in earnest His public ministry and as a result His life takes on a new focus.  He begins the mission for which He was sent by the Father.  He takes His first steps toward Calvary, His first steps toward the Cross.

          And so while this Gospel passage may be brief, it is absolutely pivotal, and, therefore, very deserving of our attention as we begin this Lenten season.  In particular there are two points for our meditation for this First Sunday of Lent that I would like to propose.  First, the fact that “the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,” and secondly, the preaching of our Lord when after forty days He came out from the wilderness. 

          One of the first things that strikes me when I hear this passage is that “the Spirit” drove Jesus out into the desert.”  The Spirit did this.  In other words, this was no fluke happening, nor was it the passing whim of Jesus to take a forty days’ excursion out into the wilderness.  No, this was at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.

Often I think we look at the happenings of our lives as though God has nothing to do with them.  In particular, we look at the dark and difficult times of our lives as though God has somehow abandoned us.  The fact is, that even when we are put to the test (perhaps especially when we are put to the test) God is with us, and maybe in some way we cannot perfectly discern this side of heaven, it all “fits in” to God’s plan for us.  As the saying goes, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” 

Of course there are definite limitations to this way of thinking.  For example, we cannot say that somehow it was “God’s plan” that a troubled young man entered a school last Wednesday and killed seventeen people.  This was in no way the work or prompting of the Holy Spirit – absolutely not.  But in the wake of such tragedies, and those more personal tragedies and trials that hit us “closer to home,” we know that God is still with us.  And we can at least choose how to respond.  We can allow these things to destroy us (through anger, sadness and confusion), or we can turn to God in faith and grow from these experiences.  We can even be inspired to do something to prevent, as far as possible, such tragedies from every occurring again.  Saint Augustine (the pupil of our own beloved Saint Ambrose) put it this way in one of his commentaries on the Psalms:  “Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial.  We progress by means of trial.  No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.”

Look at temptation specifically for a moment, like that which our Lord endured in the desert.  Of course, God Himself does not tempt us.  It would be totally nonsensical for God to lure us into something that, by definition, distances us from Him and is not in keeping with our truest nature, made as we are in the image and likeness of God.  This is important to understand:  God does not tempt us.

However, so that we might grow in holiness, God may permit us to be tempted, not so that we would fall, but so that we would come to rely more completely on God rather than on ourselves; that we would be mindful of our weakness and, therefore, our need for God’s strength and grace.  Sin, as least serious sin, is not “inevitable.”  No, there is always sufficient grace to resist temptation. 

Jesus Himself is an example of this for us.  His forty days in the wilderness tempted by Satan was not so much for Him as it was for us – to leave us an example.  Again, St. Augustine says:  “Do you think only of Christ’s temptation and fail to think of his victory?  See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself victorious in him.  He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation.”  And so, “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert.”  We should find great consolation in the fact that Jesus was tempted, and great inspiration in the fact that He did not succumb.

The second point for our consideration, briefly, is the preaching of our Lord when He returns from this “retreat” in the desert.  In 2002 Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical letter on the Rosary, and in that letter he proposed five new mysteries for our meditation in that prayer: the mysteries of light or luminous mysteries.  The third of these mysteries is “the call to repentance and proclamation of the Kingdom” by our Lord.  To many at the time this was introduced, this seemed very ambiguous.  Just what was our Holy Father was referring to here?  But it was precisely this moment described in our Gospel today.   “After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:  ‘This is the time of fulfillment.  The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

This is the first and most basic preaching of the Gospel message, a message reiterated for us this past Wednesday, on Ash Wednesday.  When you came forward to receive your ashes, you would have heard these very words of Jesus: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

How fitting, then, that at the beginning of our Lenten journey, on this First Sunday of Lent, we should have this first and most fundamental preaching of our Lord, preached, of course, only after His forty days of preparation in the desert.  “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”  This is where we must begin:  very simple, yet very profound; very challenging; yet very possible with the help of God, in fact only with the help of God.

As we enter more deeply into this time of Lent, let us examine our lives again to see where the Spirit has driven us and is driving us.  We may be surprised.  And let us take to heart that first preaching of our Lord:  “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.”