Year B: First Sunday of Lent

Parteen Parish

In his Message for Lent, Pope Francis suggests two questions that might guide us in these next six weeks. They are the first questions we hear God asking at the beginning of the Bible. First, there’s the question to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, “where are you?” and the second question is the one put by God to Cain who had murdered Abel: “where is your brother?”.

They are two great questions. The first, “where are you?” prompts us to think about our lives. Where are things at for us now? Are we happy with the direction of our lives? Are we focusing on the right values or are we creating idols out of people or objects or possessions that don’t really bring us happiness? Above all, this question is about our relationship with God? Where are we with God? Lent is about deepening our relationship with God. That can mean many things – trusting God more, dedicating time to prayer, handing over worries we have, asking forgiveness for our sins, turning away from any idols or inner demons we have created for ourselves.

In the first reading we are presented with the image of the rainbow. God explains how the rainbow would be a reminder always of how God is faithful to his covenant with Noah. When we read the story of the people of Israel we see how they continuously messed up their relationship with God but he kept giving them a chance to always begin again, to believe in his love, his fidelity, his closeness no matter what. So that’s a first step this Lent – to begin again to believe in the love of God and not let ourselves be trapped in the idols that we can make for ourselves.

The second question is “where is your brother?”. This is the question that makes us think about our relationships with others. Am I on the look-out for my brothers and sisters? Am I attentive to the needs of those around me? Do I listen? Do I hear their cries? Have I reached out to those who are alone, needing a visit, a helpful word, a kind gesture? Our sisters and brothers are always coming before us – in our family members, in casual encounters during the day but also through news stories on social media. The question “where is your brother and sister?” invites us to look out for them and see how we treat them. The Trócaire website opens us to the stories of our sisters and brothers in places of great need.

So these are two great questions for Lent: “where are you?” and “where is your brother and sister?”. Pope Francis reminds us that Lent is the time when we need to pause to think about these. We need to pause to take stock of our lives and see how we can give more of ourselves. We need to pause to recognize our neighbours just like the Good Samaritan paused when he met the wounded man on the street.

Jesus too, before he started his public ministry, was sent by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days to get ready. He too needed that time to pause, to face the temptations head on and prepare. The desert was a place of solitude. Through the prophet Hosea we hear God say, “I will lead you out into the desert and speak to your heart”. Let’s be honest, to be a Christian isn’t always easy. It can be a struggle to believe in God’s love and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We need a time like Lent, like a desert time, to let God speak to our heart and get back in touch with our true identity as children of God, recognizing how so often we end up taking our lead from the influencers around us, the advertising on our social media, the fashions of our time. But who we are and where we are is deeper than all of that.

The Church speaks of three pillars of Lent – prayer, fasting and almsgiving. They are the pillars we can rely on in answering our two questions this Lent. Prayer is taking time to pause, fasting is about turning away from idols and focusing on God, and almsgiving is about reaching out to our sisters and brothers.

In this First Sunday of Lent, let’s take Jesus’s invitation to heart: “repent and believe the Gospel”.