An Outbound Lent in Jesus Christ

“He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished”.

The days Jesus spent in the desert are one of the biblical groundings for the institution of the practice of Lent which the Church has observed since its early years.

Forty days, Sunday excluded, which lead us to Holy Week, during which the mission of Jesus will be fully revealed in his death, his Resurrection, and beyond, in the mission of the Church.

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. And if we were to imitate literally the fasting discipline that Jesus embraced for our own Lenten discipline, I’m afraid that by next week—if not already by today –most of us would have fainted under the pews before we even sang our first hymn.

In fact, our human frailty reminds us of something crucial in this season of Lent.

We are not to live the season of Lent as a discipline we impose on ourselves through our own strength in order to emulate a heroic model who lived sometime in the past.

No. We cannot be reconciled with God through our own strength.

The Lenten exodus is the path on which hope itself is formed, a hope that doesn’t discard our humanity but embraces it fully.

The way we can survive through Lent, and not only survive but live more fully, is by living it in the One who walked out of it alive and then brought life into the world.

The One who has come to us and led us into the fullness of God’s life.

What the Gospel of today invites us to do is to go deep into what is happening in the desert for Christ, that is, for us as well.

During Lent, the Spirit who led Jesus into the desert teaches us to embrace the disposition of Jesus Christ himself, not just to imitate his mere actions.

This is because the true pattern of our life is a person; it is God himself, it is not this or that thing. 

As Paul puts it in his letter that he wrote to us, Romans, it is by “one man’s obedience” that “the
many will be made righteous.”

So, let us contemplate and be transformed by the ways Jesus lives in the desert, the One whose obedience has won righteousness for us.

First of all, when the devil approaches him, Jesus has a truly divine way of countering his attempts to dominate him.

Contrary to the way we often respond when we are provoked or tempted by things we see and experience that may excite our anger, fear, or greed, or lead us into indifference, Jesus neither gets into an argument nor does he simply ignore his adversary.

He trusts in God’s long-term vision for him as well as the grounding declaration of love his Father
just pronounced at his baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Similarly, when we are tempted, there is no need to argue though our own reasonings which are
just twists and turns devised by the evil one.

We are to put all our trust in the goodness of God who loves us and loves all humans in Jesus Christ in whom we are beloved brothers and sisters.

Facing temptations, we are called to respond by a renewed trust in God, trusting in the adoption God has pronounced on our brothers and sisters and on ourselves.

When we are in difficult situations, we too, can live them through Christ by trusting that in him we are loved and guided out of these trials.

Secondly, Jesus also gives us the pattern of how to read the Scriptures through which we enter into deeper relationship with our Father and learn his ways.

Contrary to the devil who uses Scripture to force Jesus into submission, forcing him into one direction, Christ cites them to reveal how steadfast his Father’s love and generosity is for him and for all of us who are in him.

Jesus is the Word of God himself who recalls Holy Scripture to reveal his freedom and the freedom of the children of God.

In him we are moved away from having a literalist or monolithic attitude to what we read, to what we hear or see around us and trust in the Spirit to guide our discernment.

This concretely means that if we want to live through the desert of our lives finding greater life in Jesus, we are to stop reducing people to what they have said, done, or what we believe they are, even if they “are” actually this way in our eyes.

Let us not imitate the devil who tries to use twice “if you are the son of God…”, which is indeed Christ’s real identity, in order to force him to submit to his own ego.

If we would rather live Jesus’s life, we are to stop using information, true or false about each other or the world around us, as weapons against each other, against ourselves and against God. We are to fast from rapid criticism and simplistic analyses which never embrace the complexity of our human lives and problems.

Let us rather hurry in surrendering, like Jesus himself, to the Father’s generous way of love.

In the desert, we see that Jesus’ attitude is the contrary of one that weaponizes, excludes, or hates.

Even with the devil: Jesus doesn’t call him stupid or denigrate his dignity as a creature of God,
so why would we denigrate each other or ourselves?

We who know so poorly how to judge or to put things into perspective always run the risk of hurting ourselves or hurting others: our only way out of our struggles and temptations is to entrust ourselves to the Spirit of God who guides us, protects us, who makes us grow in strength.

Only by surrendering ourselves to the Father, can we gain the full stature of Christ and the strength of the Spirit which makes the devil flee and the angels come.

The place where all of this transformation happens is in the mystical reality of the Church.

The Church which is indeed the body of Jesus himself in a world which can often feel like a desert.

In the Church we are in Christ, and within the Church in Lent we also participate in the graces
of his self-control towards the evil one.

In the Church, we receive God’s infinite forgiveness if we surrender and trust more in our communion with one another and to God than in the stickiness of our sinful ways.

The Church is the workshop where, like Pinocchio, we are shaped by God himself and given to live as real children of God, to set out on a new adventure into the world.

Our lives within the Church, at work, and everywhere are marked by temptations, trials, and troubles.

The Season of Lent invites us not to overlook these realities.

The discernment of our vocation, the role, and the power that God gives us is revealed in suffering.

But this is a suffering that leads to a greater, more generous, and a truer life.

It is a life in which our disagreements, our distrust, our indifference, or our resentments are not realities by which God wants us to be limited.

Today, we are invited to lay down ourselves in everything we do as we surrender more to God who guides our ways. 

Today is also my last Sunday with you.

Over the last year I have been carried, shaped, and purified by the Spirit within this Church-workshop, within this city, in your midst.

This was possible because you made it possible.

You have given yourselves to each other and trusted in me as well.

Lives were touched and transformed because you have offered yours.

The love of God we have shared has no price; it is worth more than all the kingdoms of the world.

As I am about to leave, I would like to ask for your forgiveness for anything that was amiss during these
months, or if I have hurt you in any way.

I can assure you that, in return, I leave this Church with a greater peace than when I arrived.

We are not alone, and it is in community that we are members of Christ.

It is in community as well that we are forgiven: a community that far overpassed the limits of one parish.

It is only in togetherness that our true nature is revealed, a true nature that the devil cannot reach.