1st Sunday of Lent - B

The first thing I would like to say today is “Thank you!”

Thank you for your patience and for your generosity in participating in last week's Bishop's Lenten Appeal. Although some people graciously do not mind the interruption of Sunday Mass for an occasional appeal to support the financial needs of the Church, for others it can be a disconcerting intrusion into what is truly one of our most sacred moments each week – our celebration of the Sunday Eucharist.

Thank you for you patience, and for your generosity. After last week's appeal, our parish actually achieved the goal the Diocese of Arlington set for us this year, and so I can promise you that the only thing you will hear from me until next year regarding the Bishop's Lenten Appeal is a most sincere “Thank you!”

With this appeal behind us, at least for me, the hardest part of Lent is over!

Now we can concentrate on what is truly most important – a season of prayer fasting and almsgiving, a season of recollection, of repentance, of conversion and a change of heart, a season of renewal and growth in our appreciation of the great love God has for each of us, especially as that love is revealed in the saving death and resurrection of Jesus.

Each year on the first Sunday of Lent, the Church gives us the gospel story of the temptation of Jesus by the devil in the desert as a scripture for our meditation and reflection.

St. Mark's account of this event in Jesus' life is very brief – the Spirit encourages Jesus to go into the desert, the devil tempts Jesus, Jesus resists the devil's temptations and is ministered to by angels.

It is interesting to note that the Spirit moved Jesus to go into the desert. The mention of the Spirit is probably not to suggest that God, the Holy Spirit, wished that Jesus would be tested, but rather to suggest that we are never alone in the experiences of the desert that we go through in our lives.

In our lives, we experience the loneliness, the pain, the temptations of the desert in our addictions, in our habits of sin, in our discouragement and anxiety, our worries and our fears. We at times, like Jesus, can be tempted to feel alone or abandoned even by our God.

On this first Sunday of Lent our gospel teaches us that our temptations and experiences of the desert are real, but also that we are never alone.

If you haven't been tempted to eat meat last Friday, you probably will be some Friday in the future, or you may be tempted by even greater temptations to sins of the flesh.

If you haven't been tempted to be discouraged by the prospect of facing six more weeks of Lent, you probably will be at sometime, or you may be tempted to become discouraged or afraid by a more serous worry or anxiety.

If you haven't been tempted to become impatient or angry because you are on a spiritual high as this season of recollection and renewal begins, don't worry, you will be at some point in the next six weeks.

But through it all, let us remember as Jesus did that we are never alone – in our temptations, our fears, our impatience, in our struggles against whatever demons we find in our lives. We are never alone just as Jesus was never truly alone in the desert with the Spirit alive and present in His midst.

As we reflect on the gospel's account of the temptation of Jesus, let us begin the true work of Lent by facing our own demons with trust and confidence in the loving presence of God in our lives!

Thomas P. Ferguson
March 5, 2006