Welcome to Lent! The Catechism says of this season that “By the solemn forty days of Lent, the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (CCC 540), and fittingly, every year the Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent relates the temptation of Jesus in the desert.
In Years A and C, when we hear from Matthew and Luke, we get the fullness of the story, how Jesus fasted and all the details of his interactions with the devil and his various temptations. That’s not the case here in Year B. True to form, St. Mark gives us a pointed, concise summation of the facts we need to know: The Spirit drove Jesus into the desert, he remained there forty days, he was tempted by Satan, he was among wild beasts, and angels ministered to him. The end.
With Matthew and Luke, this part of the life of Jesus does not appear until the fourth chapters of their respective Gospels. With Mark, we pick up the story with the twelfth verse of the first chapter. In the space of the eleven verses that come before today’s Gospel, we’re reminded of Isaiah’s prophesy of a forerunner who will prepare the way of the Messiah, we’re told that John the Baptist is that promised forerunner, we see John living out his mission, and we see Jesus arrive to be baptized, with the Spirit descending on him like a dove and the Father proclaiming that Jesus is his Son, his beloved.
I’m not suggesting St. Mark is downplaying the importance of any of these events, but it’s almost as if he’s in a hurry to lay a foundation in order to get to what for him is the jumping-off point for the rest of the Gospel that bears his name. And that jumping-off point is located in the first words spoken by Jesus in Mark:
This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.
We heard these same words of Jesus just four weeks ago at the beginning of the Gospel for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time. In the verses that followed, Jesus called his first disciples and set the stage for the inauguration of his public ministry. Just as these words of our Lord serve as a pivot point in the Gospel of Mark, we do well to see the call to repentance and faith as a pivot point in our own lives.
While the focus of this First Sunday of Lent is on the temptations of Jesus in the dryness of the desert, there’s another unmistakable thread that runs through our readings today – the waters of Baptism. God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants is sealed after the waters of the great flood recede. St. Peter, himself among the baptized, reminds us that the flood “prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” And Jesus enters the desert in the immediate aftermath of his own baptism.
For those of us who have been baptized, this is the place where we too find ourselves, on the “other side of baptism,” as it were. During the Baptismal Rite, as part of the priest or deacon’s prayer over the waters of the font, he says “The waters of the great flood you made a sign of the waters of baptism, that make an end of sin and a new beginning of goodness.”
Noah and his family were given a clean slate, a new beginning of goodness. In our baptism, we receive that clean slate in an infinitely more profound way as sin is washed away and we are joined to Jesus Christ. It raises the question, then – what do we do with that clean slate?
The story of Noah comes in Chapter 9 of Genesis, page 7 of my Ignatius Bible. There are 977 pages of Old Testament that come after, and I think we all have at least a general idea of the ups and downs of the descendants of Noah over the centuries. Just so with us. If we’re honest, we can see ourselves in the words we meditate on during Stations of the Cross during Lent: “Alas, my soul also was once beautiful when it received Your grace in Baptism; but I have since disfigured it with my sins.”
Clearly, our fallen human nature makes us prone to stumble despite the graces we receive in Baptism. In a Lenten sermon (Sermo 6 de Quadragesima), Pope St. Leo the Great describes this state as “Initially, men are made new by the rebirth of baptism. Yet there still is required a daily renewal to repair the shortcomings of our mortal nature, and whatever degree of progress has been made, there is no one who should not be more advanced.”
It is this daily renewal that we’re called to in this Season of Lent. As St. Leo says: “But with the return of the season marked out in a special way by the mystery of our redemption, and of the days that lead up to the paschal feast, we are summoned more urgently to prepare ourselves by a purification of spirit.”
He continues: “The special note of the paschal feast is this: the whole Church rejoices in the forgiveness of sins. It rejoices in the forgiveness not only of those who are then reborn in holy baptism, but also of those who are already numbered among God’s adopted children.” For those of us already numbered among God’s adopted children, that forgiveness of sins is bestowed on us only through the Sacrament of Confession.
The Catechism teaches that “each of the faithful is bound by an obligation faithfully to confess serious sins at least once a year.” Some of us may chafe at the notion of obligation, of being forced to do something that makes us uncomfortable or even afraid. For me, things changed when I began to focus on the fact that I’m not confessing my sins to a potentially judgy man, I’m confessing them to Jesus Christ alone through that man’s ministry. Instead of being a source of apprehension, “celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation means being enfolded in a warm embrace: it is the embrace of the Father’s infinite mercy,” as Pope Francis described it.
Through our baptism we are cleansed from sin and joined to Christ, equipped for — and charged with — the mission of sharing the Good News with the world. That’s the mission of every baptized Christian, every single day, not just in a special season or on Sundays or holy days. It’s so often the weight of our sins that impedes us from fulfilling our mission, which is why this Lenten Season of repentance and return is such an opportunity for us. As St. Leo describes it, “Dear friends, what the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater care and devotion, so that the Lenten fast enjoined by the apostles may be fulfilled, not simply by abstinence from food but above all by the renunciation of sin.”
Just as the angels ministered to Jesus in the desert, Jesus himself ministers to us during every Mass, quelling our hunger and slaking our thirst with his Body and Blood. As our loving Savior reaches out his hand to lead us out of the desert of sin, may we heed his words on our Lenten journey to the joy of Easter: Repent, and believe in the gospel.
Image: “Christ in the Wilderness” by Ivan Kramskoy. From Wikimedia Commons.
Deacon Steve O’Neill was ordained for service to the Archdiocese of Washington in June 2013 and serves at St. Andrew Apostle in suburban Maryland. After four years in the Marine Corps and three years at the University of Maryland (where met Traci, now his wife of 30+ years, and earned a degree in English), he has worked as an analyst with the Federal government. Deacon Steve and Traci have two sons and two daughters and three grandchildren.
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