I Sunday in Lent :[2012]: Gn 9:8-15; 1 Pt
3:18-22; Mk 1:12-15
A mother camel and
her baby are talking one day and the baby camel asks, “Mom why have we got
these huge three-toed feet?” The mother replies, “To enable us trek across the
soft sand of the desert without sinking.” “And why have we got these long,
heavy eyelashes?” “To keep the sand out of our eyes on the trips through the
desert ”replies the mother camel. “And Mom, why have we got these big humps on
our backs?” The mother, now a little impatient with the boy replies, “They are
there to help us store fat for our long treks across the desert, so we can go
without water for long periods.” “OK, I get it!” says the baby camel, “We have
huge feet to stop us sinking, long eyelashes to keep the sand from our eyes and
humps to store water. Then, Mom, why the heck are we here in the Toronto zoo?” Modern life
sometimes makes one feel like a camel in a zoo. And like camels in a zoo we
need sometimes to go into the desert in order to discover who we truly are.
Lent invites us to enter into this kind of desert experience.
The desert was the
birthplace of the people of God of the first covenant. The Hebrew people who
escaped from Egypt
as scattered tribes arrived the Promised Land as one nation under God. It was
in the desert that they become a people of God by covenant. In the course of
their history when their love and faithfulness to God grew cold, the prophets
would suggest their return to the desert to rediscover their identity, their
vocation and their mission as a way of reawakening their faith and
strengthening their covenant relationship with God. The great prophets Elijah
and John the Baptist were people of the desert: they lived in the desert, ate
desert food and adopted a simple desert lifestyle. The desert is the university
where God teaches His people.
In today’s gospel
we read that after Jesus was baptized “the Spirit immediately drove him out
into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and
he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him” (Mark 1:12-13).
Where else but the desert could you have such a meaningful encounter of the
Holy Spirit as well as Satan, of the wild beasts as well as the holy angels?
The desert was the school where Jesus came to distinguish between the voice of
God which he should follow and the voice of Satan which is temptation. How many
voices do we hear from the moment we get up in the morning till the moment we
go to sleep at night? The countless voices in the daily paper, the soliciting
voices on the radio and the television, the voices of those who live and work
with us, not forgetting our own unceasing inner voices. In the desert we leave
most of these voices behind to focus on distinguishing between the guiding
voice of God and the tempting voice of Satan.
Joke : Two
dirty hippies were walking down the street and stopped at a red light. A
Catholic priest with his arm in a cast was waiting to cross. "Hey,
man," asked one, "what happened?"
"I fell in
the bathtub and broke my arm," replied the padre.
One hippie turned
to the other and asked, "What's a bathtub?"
"How do I
know?" replied the other, "I'm not a Catholic."
In
the desert we come to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, and our
divine calling. In the desert Jesus encountered beasts and angels. There are
wild beasts and angels in everyone of us. Sometimes, owing to our superficial
self knowledge, we fail to recognize the wild beasts in us and give in to
vainglory, or we fail to recognize the angel in us and give in to self-hatred.
But in the silence and recollection of the desert we come to terms with
ourselves as we really are, we are reconciled with the beasts and the angels in
our lives and then we begin to experience peace again for the first time. Lent
is the time for the desert experience. We cannot all afford to buy a camel and
head off for the desert. But we can all create a desert space in our
overcrowded lives. We can set aside a place and time to be alone daily with
God, a time to distance ourselves from the many noises and voices that bombard
our lives every day, a time to hear God’s word, a time to rediscover who we are
before God, a time to say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did. Welcome to
Lent! Welcome to the desert!
Introduction
This
Sunday is First Sunday of Lent
Message : Mindful of his covenant, the Lord promises never to
destroy creation again by floodwaters.
The waters of baptism bring salvation and forgiveness through the death
of Christ. After fasting forty days and
being put to the test, Jesus begins his public ministry.
Saints
in this week:
3rd Saturday : Saint
Katharine Drexel, virgin, USA
Katharine
Drexel, 3 March 1955 at age ninety-seven; Philadelphia heiress and foundress of
the Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament; established some forty-nine
foundations, including Xavier University in New Orleans; canonized 1 October
2000 by Pope John Paul II
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