First Sunday of Lent (B), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 20, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the First Sunday of Lent (B), Vigil
February 20, 2021

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to join you again and ponder with you the consequential conversation Jesus wants to have with us on the first Sunday of Lent, as we as we journey with Jesus into the desert.
• Most people have no desire to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a tourist visit. But after all the snow in the last month and the subzero temperatures in most parts of the U.S., many of us would admit that the desert is looking a lot more appealing! At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because the desert is what helps us to understand the 40-day pilgrimage of Lent, in which we join and imitate Jesus in the desert and ponder the fruits of what he learned and experienced there upon his return. Every Lent, the same Holy Spirit whom we read in today’s Gospel drove Jesus into the desert wants to drive us into the desert with him. Lent is meant to help us recapitulate Christ’s 40 days away from everything so that we, apart from every distraction, can focus on our relationship with God and others and on who we are — and, with Christ’s help, can confront and overcome the way that the devil seeks to distort those relations and that image.
• To go into the desert is increasingly difficult for people today. We’re so connected that if we are out of cell phone range we can easily feel totally lost. While the Lord is not calling us all physically to go to the sands of Nevada, he is calling us to the state of the desert, removing ourselves from distractions, from the television, computer, radio, newspaper, and the various things that may be fine in themselves but crowd our lives with noise so that we can’t hear God and with clutter so that we can’t see God. The first temptation we face in Lent is to refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up chocolate and potato chips. The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).
• The next lesson we need to grasp is what is supposed to be the fruit of that time in the desert. What does the Holy Spirit who drives us to this Lenten desert experience want to help us to achieve? Jesus shares this lesson with us as soon as he finished that first 40 day retreat. He returned saying, “Repent and believe in the good news.” These are the words he shared with us earlier this week, as we were marked with ashes. To repent — what metanoia means in Greek — is to revolutionize the way we look at things, at the world, at ourselves, at others, so that we might put on the way Christ looks at things. It means to turn one’s thoughts upside down, or better right side up. It’s as if we’ve been going in one direction and Jesus tells us, “Stop, turn around and go in the opposite direction.” He’s not calling us to a slight course correction, not to a one or two degree turn, but to something far closer to 180 degree turn, a radical conversion. He wants us to examine all those parts of our life that are not in alignment with him and convert in such a way that we begin to turn with him (which is what con-vertere means).
• When we look at the way the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the desert, we see the three fundamental ways we can get out of spiritual alignment and can learn from Christ how in Lent to seek to press the reset button in our spiritual life to come back into alignment.
• The first was to disorder his relationship with God, indicated by the temptation to throw himself off the parapet of the temple presuming that God would save him by sending his angels to prevent his even dashing his foot against a stone. The devil seeks to tempt us, in short, to commit spiritual suicide, to believe that God will prevent any harm to us or others if we do something fatally risky. The devil tries to get us to get us to jump off of various cliffs and then blame God for letting us suffer. Jesus shows that the proper response is never to put the Lord our God to the test, but in fact to love him and throw ourselves into his arms rather than from dangerous precipices into sin.
• The second temptation was to disorder our relationships with others. The devil promised that he would give Jesus rule over all the cities, to be in control over everyone else, to have them serve him rather than he serve them, if only he would take the bargain of falling down before the devil in homage. Jesus resisted the temptation toward this type of diabolical control by quoting Scripture about worshipping and serving the Lord our God alone. And when we do so, we seek to serve others made in that God’s image and likeness, reverencing the Lord in them, seeking to serve them with love rather than be served, to lay down our lives for them as Christ himself did.
• The third temptation was to disorder our relationship with ourselves, using what God has given us egocentrically for our own purposes rather than for God and others. This is shown in the temptation the devil gave to Jesus to change stones into bread after forty days of hunger. How strong this temptation must have been! But Jesus replied that we live not on bread alone but on every word that comes from God’s mouth. We’re supposed to use our talents not selfishly but for God, others, and ultimately for ourselves, that the word of God may be done in us.
• In response to these three fundamental temptations, Jesus not only shows us how to resist with the power of the Word of God but also as Divine Physician prescribes for us on Ash Wednesday the medicine we need when he speaks about the three traditional Lenten practices of prayer, almsgiving and fasting. Prayer helps us to order our relationship with God. Almsgiving helps us to reorder our relationship properly with our others. Fasting helps us to reorder ourselves within, making sure our body obeys a properly formed conscience. That’s why the three constitute a crucial part of our Lenten penitence, of living with Jesus in the desert and entering into his resistance to every temptation. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are not part of a spiritual multiple choice test, but are a three-drug cocktail we need to treat our illness. Prayer exercises our faith in God, fasting our hope toward the fulfillment of our physical and spiritual hungers, almsgiving our love for others as Christ has loved us. They are at the root of our spiritual renewal.
• And so let’s get practical.
  • What resolution will you set for your prayer? How about a commitment to go to daily Mass? Or to pray each day for a half-hour? Or to pray the Rosary each day? Any of those would be very effective in making your God is truly God in your life. Many likewise add the Stations of the Cross on Fridays.
  • What about fasting? Fasting can help us overcome our addictions and gain self-mastery so that we can give ourselves to the things of God. How about giving up all alcohol and all sweets? If that’s too much, how about going without condiments on food, not using sugar, salt, pepper, ketchup, salad dressing, and butter? How about going only on two meals rather than three? Each of these would help us get in control of our appetite for food, which will help us control our other appetites.
  • Finally, what about almsgiving? How generous can you be with those you know are struggling to make ends meet because of COVID layoffs, or with the homeless, or with the Church and good initiatives to spread the faith? How generous can you be in forgiving those who have hurt you? How lavish can you be with your time, visiting in person or virtually with those who are isolated because of the pandemic?
• I’d urge you to choose at least one in each category and persevere to live them with God’s help.
• We finish with the Holy Eucharist, which we look forward to receiving. In preparation for the Eucharist, we always fast, at least an hour, so that we may hunger more and more for every word that comes from the Father’s mouth, and especially for the Word-made-flesh, Jesus, who comes from the Father’s bosom. In the Mass, we experience the supreme form of prayer, entering into Jesus’ own from the Last Supper and Calvary. And we not only receive Jesus’ greatest alms — his body, blood, soul and divinity — but are helped by him from the inside, to “do this” in memory of him, living truly Eucharistic lives by giving our body and blood, sweat, tears and heart in loving service to others. As we prepare to receive Jesus, we ask him for the graces to live this 40 day calling us to “come with him apart from the crowds to a deserted place” in the most bold and holy way possible, so that we can experience the joy that comes from repentance and faith, and become signs with him to the whole world that this is the time of fulfillment and the kingdom of God is at hand.

The Gospel on which this homily was based was: 

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