The one who goes in the way which Christ has gone, Is much more sure to meet with him, than oneWho travels by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far ahead, May turn and take me by the hand, And more: May banish my decays.
Fr. Henry O’Shea: No matter what we read, whether it be a novel, an article in a newspaper or online, a poem, a catalogue, a school text-book, we always bring our personal baggage and our hang-ups, to that reading. We bring the baggage of our own prejudices, of our own preconceptions, of our understandings and misunderstandings and the baggage of our expectations. The same can be said about what we choose to call up and watch and listen to on our smartphones, iPads, or whatever media we happen to be hooked on.
The Bible, Sacred Scrupture, is no exception to this rule of bringing our baggage. We can read the Bible simply as literature. We can read it for personal instruction or spiritual benefit. As with any book, we can start on page one with the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament and read right through to the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. And as we read, we discover that the Bible is made up of writings of many different types, from history to law-making to religious preaching, poetry and much more.
In the liturgy of the Mass, we use a book called the Lectionary. This is a selection of readings from the Old and New Testaments interspersed with chants, nearly always from the Psalms, which are a book of 150 songs or poems from the Old Testament. Then there are verses used as acclamations such as, for example, those before the Gospel.
In compiling the Lectionary and offering it to us, the Church approaches the text with its own baggage, as we mentioned above. At Mass, the texts we read are always chosen in order to be in some way related to the mystery of Christ.
Here, the word mystery does not mean a detective mystery or something we cannot understand. Here, mystery means a showing or presentation of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And, from that showing, there necessarily follow the effects on us and the demands made on us by this life, death and resurrection. As with any text, there is always a danger that speaking about the liturgical readings can become a literary or scholarly exercise, a playing with words, or a forced effort to squeeze some practical moral message out of them. We can lose sight of the fact that in all the readings, it is Jesus, himself the Word of God in flesh and bone, who is speaking the words of life, the words of his life and our lives, to us.
Today’s readings for the first Sunday in Lent are typical of this linking of all three readings to Christ. In one way or another, they deal with time, with history, with life, with death, with faith. And they deal with all of these as seen through the lens or prism of the mystery of Christ. They deal with the past, with the present and with the future.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus, having been baptised in the Jordan, spends forty days in the desert and then, briefly on the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem, being tempted by Satan. Jesus is being prepared for entry into the land of his mission. That is, Jesus is being prepared for his proclamation of the good news from God. Jesus is being prepared for a journey that will end up with his Crucifixion and Resurrection.
It is as if Jesus is repeating the wanderings of the people of Israel for forty years in the desert before they entered the promised land. Today’s first reading, from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, gives a short summary of this journey, a journey here recalled in a context of liturgical, cultic or worshipping thanksgiving for its reality and for its outcome.
During the forty days of preparation, Jesus is presented as rejecting all the allures, all the seductions of earthly power – even of psychic-magical power. He refuses to turn stones into bread saying, ‘People do not live on bread alone’. He asserts that there is more to life than temporary gratification of physical and psychological needs. He asserts that there is more to life than owning and controlling billions of dollars, euros, yens, yuans or pounds and the political hard power that these can buy. Jesus makes it clear that there is more to life than power to dominate and power to exploit earthly kingdoms, to establish colonies of all kinds, including colonies in our minds. If we need any proof of the dangers and disasters of such a mind-set, we need only look at what is happening all over the world as we speak.
Today we are invited to set out, accompanied by Jesus and in the company of our tribe of sisters and brothers, on our own forty-day journey to the reality of Easter. Now, we are marching as the new Israel, the new universal people of God. We call this journey Lent, which is an old Anglo-Saxon word for the season of Spring, an idea that contains its own promise. In Latin and in many other languages the season is simply known as the Forty Days.
Today’s second reading, from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, pulls all three readings of the Mass together. St Paul explains that in Jesus all of our journeys are given a meaning, given a past, given a present and given a future. St Paul tells us that all of us are and can be saved – if we accept and welcome Christ’s invitation and confess with our lips and believe in our hearts – that is, believe in the very core of our being – if we believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. And in doing so God raised, raises and will raise us, potentially and really, with Christ.
Of course, at some stage in our physical, bodily, lives, we die and it is foolish to deny this, but believing in our hearts, and proclaiming with our lips, that Jesus is Lord, we enter into the pledge of eternal life. This is a pledge that is made good in the resurrection of that same Jesus, the Christ.
But this is not magic, not a conjuring-trick. This is not an automatic, mechanical, exercise. This is not a mere box-ticking of a catalogue of our ascetical and spiritual gymnastics or a list of our good deeds, of givings-up, givings-in and givings-over.
Our hearts and minds need to participate fully, to expand during the forty years of the Chosen People’s wanderings which can serve an image of our earthly lives. We need consciously to make our own the new life offered and made possible for us at and by our Baptism. This involves right belief and right behaviour. It involves discovering our real, redeemed, selves. It involves setting out at once on the forty-day journey – or the many forty-day journeys – to which Jesus invites us when he tells us in today’s Gospel, ‘You must worship the Lord you God and serve him alone.’
Yet Lord instruct me to improve my fast. By starving sin and taking such repast, As may my faults control: That I may revel at my door, Not in my parlour, but banqueting the poor. And among those poor, my soul.
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