My dear friends, the Lord give you peace. In today’s readings we are given both a destination and a purpose for our Lenten journey. As we walk towards Jerusalem with our Lord throughout the coming weeks, we are reminded to truly unite with him in denying ourselves for the good of others, while also recognizing the inherent good that this self-denial accomplishes within us.
It is also a time to participate in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. Repentance – returning back to the Lord if we have strayed, is the first step to continuing our relationship with him. Priests will be even more available during this time to help you in this regard.
The season of Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday. If Sundays are excluded from the count, the season lasts forty days. The forty-day length of Lent is rooted in the biblical usage of the number forty. Forty is typically indicative of a time of testing, trial, penance, purification, and renewal. In the New Testament, forty days is the length of Jesus’ time of trial in the desert in preparation for his public ministry and proclaiming the Gospel.
In the first reading, we find ourselves back in the desert. Moses gives a dire, yet loving warning. Whenever we try to be clear with others, and in the truth with them, we are loving them, notwithstanding how difficult a conversation that may be. Moses is very forthright: “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous, and the LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy. If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish; you will not have a long life on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy” Deuteronomy 30:15-16.
Our life is a continuous stream of spiritual tests and exams. Every day, we will be tempted and tried through the allurements of the world, the concupiscence of our flesh, and the fallen angels led by their master, the Devil. Moses is saying to the people, what God continually says to each of us: “I have set before you life and prosperity, death and doom.” Our loving Father daily presents us with the grace of exercising our freedom in the right way, choosing the good which will be conducive to life and prosperity. In fact, the ultimate free choice he has invited us to make, is to embrace, love and listen to his only Begotten Son, the Word made Flesh, and in so doing we would not only be choosing life, but as Jesus himself said, “I have come so that they may have life, and life in its fullness.” Or, we could choose evil, neglect God, others, and our own bodies which are his temple, and plummet ourselves to the wrong kind of death which is two-fold: Earthly death, and eternal death in hell. Earthly death, is inevitable for all of us unless we are still alive when the Lord returns. But for many of us it comes way too prematurely, and robs us of the time we could have been striving to build the Kingdom of God with all the other people who opted to follow Jesus. This tendency towards premature death is something which our fallen world seems to be championing more and more, with things like abortion and euthanasia being heralded as mercy, rather than the direct affront to God’s commands and guidance to multiply and subdue the earth, that they truly are. Then there’s power, pleasure, wealth, and honours in their extreme forms, which all lead one to eventual death.
Our Divine Saviour tried to illuminate us when he made this declaration: “For whoever wants to save his life (with those substitutes for God) will lose it, but whoever loses his life (in virtuous living) for My sake will find it” Matthew 16:25. In other words those who live for themselves, seeking their own good always, and in their ambition even neglect or trample on the dignity of others, will end up empty. Those who seek rather to generously and courageously search, live and love the will of God, will find life and life in abundance which leads to that which is everlasting.
In the gospel, Jesus gives us the destination for our Lenten journey – the cross. It will not be our ultimate destination, for that will come through Easter. But it is the grace and miracle we have our sights on as we walk towards Jerusalem with our Lord. May the blessed Virgin Mary, who accompanies every one of her children as they make their earthly pilgrimage, continue to give you signal signs of her protection and may we all embrace prayer with her in a more radical way this Lent, so as to allow God to continue to fashion us into the saints he knows we can be, if we but put our hearts and minds to it, which he aids through his grace. Jesus, King of Mercy, be with us who wish to follow thee. Amen.
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