Into the wilderness (First Sunday of Lent, Year B)

How are your Lenten sacrifices going? Did you forget to give something up? Or like me, did you try to give up all meat and food from animals and only make it to Thursday? Did you forget to fast or did you eat meat last Wednesday or Friday? Well, the good news is I don't think you'll burn forever in hell. At least not for that. The bad news is that you have no excuse. You can begin Lent today. Today's readings show us how.

In the days of Noah and the Great Flood, God set a rainbow in the sky to remind us of his promise to save us from destruction. Whenever we see a rainbow, we remember God's promise.

In the days of Jesus, God set a cross on a hill to remind us of his promise to save us from the power of sin and death. When we see a cross, we remember God has kept his promise.

Lent helps us remember the God who never forgets us.

Mark's gospel today is short and to the point. Unlike the gospels of Luke and Matthew, there is no dramatic confrontation and dialogue between Jesus and Satan. In fact, Mark doesn't even say that Jesus fasted.

Mark doesn't say the Holy Spirit lead Jesus into the desert; he says the Holy Spirit DROVE Jesus into the desert. The goal is the same: to prepare for his life and mission Jesus must confront Satan and overcome temptation.

There are two main characters in the story: Jesus and Satan. There are two groups of extras: wild beasts and angels. And the stage is the wilderness. Only in the wilderness and only by confronting evil can Jesus discover the purpose of his life and the will of God.

And isn't that what we all want to know? What is the purpose of my life? What is the will of God for me?

To find out, we only need to do what Jesus did: enter the wilderness.

Guess what? The wilderness is inside you. The beasts and the angels are inside you. Satan and Jesus are inside you.

You enter the wilderness precisely by giving up things up during Lent, things that distract you, entertain you, amuse you or confuse you.

We don't give up things just to make ourselves miserable for 40 days. We pretend we have sinned so we can pretend we are sorry and after 40 days we can pretend we are forgiven and then at Easter we can pretend to be happy again. Then we wonder why our religion and our life seem like a pretense. Nor should we give up things to try to control God and get what we want and make God do what we want. And the worst reason to give up things is to make ourselves feel pious and holier and better than other people.

No, we fast and we abstain and we give things up during Lent in order to enter into the wilderness of our soul. There we will encounter wild beasts: our fears, our bad memories, our anger, our hatred, our sins. There we will be comforted by angels: love, fond memories, joy, laughter, hope. There we will face temptations: pride, guilt, revenge, self delusion.

There too we will encounter both Jesus and Satan. We learn to distinguish the voice of Satan from the voice of Jesus. Satan says, "You are worthless. You are nothing. Even God cannot save you. Give up." The voice of Jesus says, "I love you. I gave my life for you. You're worth it."

The temptations we face are the same Jesus faced. Feel sorry for yourself. Think only of yourself. Forget your humanity. Seize power. Use people. Betray God. Who would it hurt?

Every sin we commit comes from these temptations.

Satan wants us to forget who Jesus is and to forget who we are and to forget what God has done for us.

You, each of you, are precious children of God, made in God's image and likeness and NOTHING you can do can change or destroy that. Sin makes us forget this.

It's when we forget who we are that evil takes over our lives.

We do not fast and give things up for Lent to earn God's love; we fast and give things up to remind ourselves how much God loves us.

This Lent give up the things, the attitudes, the language that disguise who you are. Give up the diversions that drown out the voice of God in your heart. Give up the habits that distort the image of God in which you were made.

Then you will discover the purpose of your life; then you will know the will of God.

Fasting for life (Friday after Ash Wednesday)

The holy season of Lent encourages us to cultivate a spirit of detachment and mindfulness. Of course, not just any mindfulness and not just any detachment. If you’re like me, you have plenty of mindfulness. Every morning I wake up mindful of the pains in my knee or the ache in my back or the constant ringing in my ears. I’m so mindful of my own problems I become detached all right, detached from our community life and often detached from life itself.

But Lent calls us to be detached from the things of this world in order to become mindful of the needs of our neighbors and the presence of God in this world and in our lives.

Giving things up for Lent has fallen out of favor in recent decades. But fasting and abstinence still have their place. We might be excused due to our age from traditional fasting from meals. But Isaiah shows us the true fasting pleasing to God: to break unjust fetters and share our bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless. There is no statute of limitations on acts of charity.

Giving things up for Lent, in my opinion, has to go beyond giving up harmful things: smoking or drinking or eating too much. Giving up these things have their place and Lord knows I can certainly stand to shed a pound or two---or twenty.

But Lent calls us to sacrifice other things, things that eat up our time and fill our mind. Turning the television or radio on as soon as I wake up in the morning, drinking countless cups of coffee, surfing the internet at every opportunity, reading newspapers and periodicals from morning till night, doing crossword puzzles, Sudoku or jigsaw puzzles might be OK and good in themselves, but done habitually they slowly, insidiously, numb me to life and therefore rob me of life itself.

It’s not the action so much as the routine I need to give up. I can go through my entire day on automatic pilot without so much as a conscious thought as to the flavor, smell or texture of the food I am eating, the aroma of the coffee, the smell of the freshly fallen snow, the coolness of the air on my face, much less the concerns of my fellow Maryknollers here in this house.

This holy season of Lent calls us to decide, not how we will spend the rest of our lives or not even these Forty Days but rather how we will live fully today, which is the only time any of us have in which to live. Each sacrifice, each penance becomes a reminder of how temporary our life is on this earth. Each food or beverage given up makes us mindful of the countless millions around the world for whom fasting is not a choice. And the Eucharist we are about to receive gives us all the strength, courage and grace we need to do something about the injustices in our world.

Above all, this holy season of Lent invites us, through fasting, through abstinence, through prayer and through sacrifice, to be ever mindful of each precious moment of life, the needs of our neighbors and the presence, the love, the mercy of God that surround us.