Season of Lent
-
February 26, 2023We are now in the season of Lent, the time of preparation for the liturgical celebration of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our parish offers various opportunities for you to meaningfully do so: Lenten Talks both in English and Spanish (dates and speakers to be announced), Stations of the Cross (all Fridays of Lent), Communal Penance Service (March 28th), Palm Sunday (April 1st and 2nd), Stations of the Cross: A Night of Prayer and Reflection (April 5th), and many more. Please save the dates and plan to participate actively.
The season of Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday. If Sundays are excluded from the count, the season lasts forty days. The forty-day lent is rooted in the biblical usage of the number forty, which typically indicated a “considerable time” of testing, trial, penance, purification and renewal.
In the Old Testament, the face of the earth was cleansed and purified during a forty-day period (Gen. 7,4 and Gen. 8, 5-6), Moses fasted forty days and nights on Mount Sinai before receiving the tablets of the covenant (Ex. 34,28), the Israelites spent forty years wandering in the desert, as a time of testing, trial and purification before reaching the Promised Land (Jos. 5,6 and Num. 32,13), the Prophet Elijah spent forty days in the desert before encountering God on Mount Horeb (1 Kgs. 19, 8), and the Ninevites were given forty days before God was going to destroy the city, allowing time for repentance and conversion (Jon. 3, 4-5). In the New Testament, as we see in our Gospel this weekend, forty days is the length of Jesus’ time of trial in the desert in preparation for his public ministry of proclaiming the Gospel. (See also Mk. 1, 12-15 and Lk. 4, 1-13) .
The temptations given to Jesus represent the temptations we often face: the temptation to satisfy personal needs by material possessions, the temptation to perform miraculous deeds by spiritual power, and the temptation to seek political power and social influence by evil means. But as Jesus dismissed them through prayer, penance, and the active use of the Word of God, we too are called to dismiss them by using the same means. It will take struggling, but in the process, we become stronger. Each time one is tempted to do evil but does good, one becomes stronger.
Finally, let me just say that we are never tempted beyond our power. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul says: “No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it. (1 Cor. 10, 13). Yes, my friends. With the help of God, we can win against the enemy.