FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT - C

FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT – C (Dt 26:4-10; Rom 10:8-13; and Luke 4:1-13) Theme: Let us enter into the desert of life and win the trials: for we are Full of the Holy Spirit Reflection Lent: Journey of the Spiritual Renewal - We are in the Time of Lent. We have just started our journey of the Lent. It is a journey because for forty day we walk towards the Great Feast of the Easter. We need to begin our journey and in fact, we have begun it with the Ash Wednesday. In the journey there will moments of joy. There will also be some hurdles which tend to block our journey and make us look back and return. As we enjoy the joyful moments, we need to face also the difficult moments. The journey has to continue in spite of numerous stops and hindrances. Our journey has to proceed further with the hope and challenge to reach the destiny. If we concentrate well on the way and get through the hurdles with courage and commitment, touching the goal is not very hard. Instead, if we allow ourselves to be attracted to the false images and either stop or turn back, we come back to the point of departure. Then, we will be no more victorious but failures. - Journey of the Spiritual Renewal: Lent is thus a journey and not a simple journey. It is a journey of Spiritual Renewal. Renewal always demands for the leaving/renouncing something and taking up something new. Lent is the time in which we need to say good bye for all the passions of the world and thus be clothed with the Spirit of Christ. Our life becomes spiritually renewed. In the season of Lent, Christ proposes, through the Scriptures the ways and means for this renewal: praying, fasting and arms-giving. Rightly, Pope Benedict XVI calls Lent as the Pilgrimage towards the Interior Life. We need to look into ourselves. We need to examine our conscience. We need to realize well our origin and our destiny. Looking into ourselves needs lot of sincere attempt and authentic research. Is it possible as our life is so much immersed in the mind-breaking sounds of the world? We need not worry. One immediate answer is this: there is a possibility. Today’s readings pave the way towards interior life with the experience of the desert. - Desert Experience Helps Us To See Within: The most effective way for the Spiritual Renewal is to look into ourselves: to turn our sight into ourselves. The Church, as every year, proposes also for this Lent, the desert experience. What is desert experience? In the language of the world, desert is a place of hunger and thirst, a place of terrible fear of losing life, a place of desperation and a place without the way out; in a word, it is place where human life is not possible. In the spiritual sense, as the Scriptures testify, it is the place of interaction, as the episode of Israel in the desert points. It is place of interaction with oneself and with God. How can this be possible? In the desert, there are two important aspects: silence and solitude. In the silence of the heart one can listen to the voice of the interior conscience. In the solitude of the life one can feel the presence of the personal Lord. In the desert there is no disturbance from the exterior life: no passions to attract and no ways to misguide. One is all alone with oneself and with God. It is the favorable time to make these two movements: towards within and towards heavens. Nothing else to do. It is a period of experience with ourselves and with God in whom we believe. It is for this reason, the desert experience – life of silence and solitude – will help to become spiritually empowered. Once, we recognize the aspect of spirit and realize the falsity of the material world, we can have the fruitful destiny. We become victorious and stand above ourselves and above the world: we are with and in Christ. This is the destiny that the season of Lent puts before us. No need to be preoccupied. We can have this desert experience because there is Our Master, Jesus Christ, who entered into this experience and come out victorious. Readings: Jesus’ Desert Experience – A Spiritual Power for His Mission - A Time of Preparation for Public Ministry: Jesus enters into the desert to experience His Father’s presence and will and to prepare himself for it. It happens in between his Baptism and the beginning of his Mission. It serves as the connecting point between two important aspects: Baptism, where he is revealed as the One with whom God has well-pleased and the Mission, for which he has come down and through which he has to reveal God’s love to the world. It is, thus, a very significant period in the life of Jesus. It is in this Desert Experience that Jesus interacts with himself for the concentration of all the spiritual power and interacts with His Father without whom he can do nothing. It is for this purpose Jesus enters into the desert to be all alone, yet with the full of the Holy Spirit. He meets his Father’s will in silence and solitude, in prayer and fasting. He does not desire anything material. He is not occupied and preoccupied with the daily food and daily living. All he desires is to be with his Father, who sustains him and leads him. It does not mean that he does not encourage any material needs. But there is a particular time allotted entirely for his Father: away from this world and to be closer to his Father. By this he reveals that everyone has to spend some time in silence and in solitude, so that he can enter into himself by which alone he knows himself; further to spend some time in prayer and fasting so that he renounces the desires of this world and enter into the world of God by which alone he knows his spiritual destiny. The desert experience of Jesus is an occasion to recognize his Figure and his Vocation: who he is and what he has to do. It is therefore, a time of preparation for the future mission which he has to begin immediately. - Entry of the Devil: Jesus is filled with the power of the Spirit and the presence of his Father in prayer for forty days. As long as he is in prayer and spiritually empowered the Devil has not entered. There is no door opened to it because Jesus is strong in the Spirit. It is waiting for its turn. It cannot and it has no capacity to disturb one who is spiritually deep and profound. It has its power only with the exterior things. His pawn can be thrown only when one is materially and physically weak. This happens exactly in the desert experience of Jesus. His interior life is filled with the presence of his Father and the joy of the Spirit to commit himself to his mission. In this context, the devil does not dare to touch him or tempt him. After forty days of fasting he feel hungry. Though in mind and spirit he is strong, he became weak in the body with the hunger. It is the time for the devil. He enters into the scene. He is unable to touch within him. He touches only what is exterior and material: the hunger. This is the time of the entry of the devil. When one is enchained with the material passions, the passage is prepared for the devil to touch. He takes the occasion and leads him completely into the world of desires and passions blurring his mind and spirit. With the same intention of obscuring Jesus from his person and mission, the devil enters to do something taking the advantage of his hunger. But when one is spiritually strong, he can win over the exterior attractions. The devil has no last word. Last word will always be of the one who is spirit-filled. This happens in the meeting between Jesus and the Devil. - The Three Famous Temptations: The devil tempts Jesus in the three highest possible ways, hunger, power and success. It is here a man falls very easily because the bundles of wants are part of his life ambition. The devil in fact waits for this moment. The one who resists these temptations with the power of the inner spirit remains untouched and un-tempted. Not that the devil does not tempt such a man. It tries to drag man from his good personality and his proper vocation. It tries and tries but if the spiritually-grown man is strong enough to continuously resist, it turns back with failure. The life of the saints is such. They are indeed put into the test. But they remain un-contaminated because they combat with the power of the Spirit. Jesus is an example for this. He fights with the clever and cunning devil with the force of the Word of God and with the Power of his Prayer. For each temptation he quotes from the Scriptures: “Man does not live by bread alone”, “you should adore the Lord your God” and “Do not put the Lord to the test.” He demonstrates that one can get through the temptations if he is acquainted well with the power of God’s word. Not three, even thirty temptations can be overcome with the power that flows through the presence and the word of God. Conclusion: We are placed in the desert of life – Let us Fight with the Spirit - In the name of Jesus we can combat the trails of life: We are sent into the world after our Baptism. We profess our faith and being with the Lord through the beautiful moments of entrance into the faith. We desire to enter into the camp of Jesus – sphere of his life and work. For this we are sent into the life. Our life often seems to be a desert. We are faced with the material hunger, mental depression and spiritual desperation. We enter into the desert of life. After our Baptism and before entering into the Christian task, we need to have the desert experience as Jesus had. It means, that we need to spend some time in prayer and fasting and in silence and solitude so that we prepare ourselves well with the spirit. Once we are empowered with the spiritual life, no attraction of the world can pull us back. We need to fear of entering to the desert. Christ is before us. He is walking ahead of us. If we follow his foot prints there is no chance for our fall. The devil may come to blur our life and our work. We can combat the temptation of the devil in the powerful name of Jesus. The name of Jesus is our weapon to win the evil. - Victory is the destiny of our Journey: Insofar we combat the temptations with the spiritual strength we never lose. We cannot but have them in our life. They come in every moment of our earthly life. They have been there from the very beginning of human life. They will be there till the end. There is no human life without the numerous temptations that make a horrible attack. They have come in the life of Jesus. They will come also in our life. They become part of our daily experience and existence. We move forwards fully armed with the power of Christ to combat them and win them. Our movement is a forward movement, towards a destiny. The destiny, the point of arrival, is not the loss of life but gain of new life. We will stand victorious because Our Master is victorious. He entered into the new life of resurrection and glory after he has encountered all the promptings of the devil, not only few minor temptation but even the passion and death. The victory of Jesus will be our victory. The glory of Jesus will be our glory. The joy of Jesus will be our joy. Finally, the life of Jesus will be our life. With Christ we combat the hindrances and in Christ we are rise up victorious over the fading powers of the devil and evil inclinations. In fact, this is the destiny we have to arrive at after our journey. The Lent will end up finally with the Easter. The mourning will end up with the joy. The desert will finally end up with the fountain of life. We need to cross through all these hurdles to arrive at the desired destiny, the Resurrection and life. With and In Christ we are always secure to emerge as victorious. With this confidence in the desert experience of Christ, we also enter into the desert of life and combat all the temptations, for we are filled with the Spirit.