Sunday Gospel Comment
Alberic Jacovone OSB
YEAR A FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT - 13.2.05 Gen 2,7-9.3,1-7; Rom 5,12-19; Mt 4,1-11 Struggling against evil Lent
2005 : 40 days.
It’s an invitation to deeper prayer, grace & intimacy with God. It’s a
program of preparation & a catechetical instruction urging us all, to
celebrate worthily & gratefully, the great event of Christ’s death &
resurrection: we call Easter. We’ve said in our opening prayer: ‘Father,
trough the observance of Lent, may we understand the mystery of Christ’s Death
& Resurrection & reflect it in our lives’. This year, many activities
are available, in order to fittingly live out the Easter Event, when Our Lord
destroyed evil & death by accepting his cross, & through his
resurrection restored our humanity to its original dignity. In this program we
are not alone: we are mindful of our ancestors who for centuries have developed
& refined effective ways (& ‘sacred plays’) whereby we can take
personal participation: Last Wednesday, we’ve started with the ceremony of the
‘Ashes’, now we can join ‘Lenten prayer groups’, Stations of the Cross,
or take up any prayer, fasting & self-denial... which will enable us to
re-enact our Lord’s ‘Passing-over’ from slavery to freedom (Exodus), or
‘passing over’ from death & evil to new life, on Palm Sunday, Holy
Thursday, Good Friday & Easter. This year, let’s join the Catholic
community world-wide & be reconciled & renewed in fasting, self-denial
& prayer. Lent has its own richness & engineering: whether we have (or
not) any adults to go through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA),
Lent is important for the whole parish community, - it has its own devoted,
positive, enlightened, encouraging spirit; - in it, the meditation on the
Passion of Christ, (horrendous as it’s shown by Mel Gibson’s movie), wipes
away all that is destructive, negative, strangling, ‘do or die’. Year
of the Eucharist. Lent
this year is more that a time of reflection, renewal & reconciliation:
whatever age, status or situation we are in, we are reminded ‘not to be
overcome by evil, instead to overcome evil with good’ (Rom12,21). The ‘good
news’ is that evil can be & indeed has been
overcome in our lives - and this not because we have in us the power to do so,
but by the grace of God, & by the love of our Lord who comes to us in the
Eucharist. Jesus who for us underwent Passion Death & Resurrection, now asks
us to live with him the victory over evil & death. This year, Pope John Paul
II, adds the powerful incentive and encouragement of Christ’s abiding presence
in the Eucharist. He asks the Catholic world to celebrate Year of the Eucharist,
in the awareness that God abides with us, & that Jesus is really close to us
at every step of our journey, until the end of time. The Real Presence of our
Lord is meant to add energy to our struggle against evil in & among us.
Devotion to Jesus -suffering for us & living among us- urges us to be strong
in taking up our Lenten asceticism & freely-imposed self denial. Jesus asks
us to deal with our temptations & to oppose evil in whatever shape or
cunning it may present itself. In our imitation of Christ, creative fasting has
its place: in life, we do at times literally starve ourselves, in order to
prevent disease, cancer, ‘fatties & nasties’ from taking advantage on
our antibodies and destroying our health. The same is true for our emotional,
spiritual & moral life. Taking up our cross has its logic & reason: we
all love life; & it’s natural that we resist all that is hurting or
punitive, negative or destructive, masochistic or sadistic. Still we must keep a
healthy control on our blind, addictive forces: such as drugs & alcohol -
lure of riches - lust for pleasure - glitter of fame. If left unchecked, these
forces will surely destroy us & our relationships. May the Lord help us! ______________________________________ |
