Here I am Lord. I come to do your will.

 Second Sunday of Lent B  2024

 

 God did the unthinkable. 

The God who had led Abraham from his homeland, the God who had given Abraham the promise of a land and progeny beyond counting said, “Take your son Isaac, the one you love, and offer him up as a holocaust.”  In effect, God was saying, “You gave up everything based on my promise, and I gave you the son who would fulfill that promise.  Now, do you love me enough to give it all back?”  Unlike Job from whom God took everything away, God asked Abraham to give it back freely, to sacrifice everything he had hoped for and all he had received in willing obedience to God. 

Abraham’s trust in God enabled him to walk before the Lord in the land of the living.  The land of the living for Abraham as well for ourselves is always the concrete circumstances and situations we experience from day to day.  Initially God told Abraham:  “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you.”  Indeed, Abraham was faithful to the call of God in his life.  He gave up his past.  In today’s account, Abraham was being asked to give up his future as well in sacrificing his only son Isaac.   What is being asked of  Abraham is hard to reconcile with our notion of  a loving God.

Abraham’s response to all of this was:  “Here I am Lord.”  But we know that the near sacrifice of his son Isaac was ultimately not asked of Abraham.

The story still can remain an enigma and a little troubling for us, does it not.

But we know very well this story of Abraham in the OT prefigures the death of Jesus.  What God would not ultimately ask of Abraham, God freely gives.  Indeed God the Father sacrifices His son Jesus, His only son, the one whom He loves.  When we look upon the crucified Jesus, God did the unthinkable out of love for us.  While it is almost unimaginable for us to think the God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, may we ponder that God did the unimaginable out of love for us and for our salvation.  He gave us His son Jesus who was to be crucified on the cross.

May we embrace our Lenten journey in the context of God’s unconditional love for us.  In our Lenten journey and in our life journey, can we say “Here I am Lord” when we face the challenges of life that call us to give up our past and perhaps our future as well.  What is God asking of you this Lent?

Has the Lord ever asked the unthinkable from you?  As we reflect on the Living Word of God, may we be aware that God questions us in the Scriptures in the same that God questioned Abraham.  What is it that we are meant to see.  What is it that we cannot see?  At least, not yet?

In this Lenten season as you seek to embrace the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, perhaps the Lord is speaking to you about moving out of your comfort and embrace this disciplines more significantly as your commitment to place your relationship with Jesus as the North Star of your life.

In the Scriptures today, the story of Abraham is coupled with that of the Transfiguration. In one way, the two accounts move in opposite directions.  In the story of Abraham, the account opens in darkness and moves to light.  God tests Abraham’s faith but stops his sacrifice.  The Transfiguration satrs in light but points to darkness.  Christ is transfigured on Mount Tabor, but only to prepare to go down the mountain for his coming sacrifice on Calvary.

In the Gospel account, Jesus led the apostles Peter, James, and John up a high mountain apart by themselves  He then was transfigured before them and his clothes became dazzling white…from the cloud came a voice, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”

In the experience of the Transfiguration, the apostles were given a glimpse of the risen Lord in his transfigured glory.  Then came the voice of God the Father, “This is my beloved Son, listen to him.”  In our own journey of faith, and we each have a unique journey.  My journey is not yours and your journey is unique to you, but the common denominator we all have is the words spoken by God the Father at the Transfiguration:  “Listen to him.”  Our journey begins and ends with Jesus.  We are to listen and to respond to His call in our lives. 

In the Transfiguration account, Peter wanted to stay up on the mountain.   He said to the Lord:  ‘Rabbi, it is good that we are here.  Let us make three tents.”  But the Lord had other plans for Peter, James, and John.  They were to come down the mountain and journey to Jerusalem where Jesus was to suffer and to die.  They were called to be the disciples of the crucified Christ as well as the risen Christ.

The Gospel invites us to reflect on how are we being called to see with new eyes?  What is clouding our view of the transfigured Christ?  How does the world look different through Jesus’s vision?  Does our identity and our purpose need to be transformed?   Most importantly, what is the cross in your life that identifies you as a disciple of the crucified Christ as well as a disciple of the Risen Christ?

Spiritually speaking, I need some speed bumps in my Lenten journey to slow me down and to make me more conscious of my need for conversion and more radically trusting in God as Abraham did.  Perhaps this describes your Lenten journey as well.  For sure we have our own plans for the Lenten season, but the question is how can the Lord catch our attention and invite us to  ‘Listen to Him’ and His plans for our Lenten journey?

Sometimes the spiritual speed bump given to us is not of our own choosing – when you are confronted with the unthinkable in your life.  Perhaps, just perhaps, the Lord is calling you to a deeper relationship with Him as was the case of Abraham, our father in faith.

We need to speak to the Lord in prayer and then to listen to the Lord in prayer.

St Paul in the second Scripture reading says:  “If God is for us, who can be against us?”  Paul ends this beautiful meditation with the words:  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities…nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

 May our Lenten journey confirm us in our conviction of faith that there is nothing that will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Have a Blessed Day.

              

Into what desert is the Spirit of God leading you in this lenten season?

 

First Sunday of Lent  B  2024

We have entered into another Lenten season.  We were marked with ashes this past Wednesday as Lent formally began. These ashes acknowledge that we all belong to the order of penitents.  We all confess that we are sinners, and we stand in need of the Lord’s healing forgiveness.  The light of Christ that is within us has been dimmed by the darkness of our sin.   We acknowledge this reality with these ashes.  We were given the mantra to:  Repent and believe in the Gospel.

In the words of Pope Francis, the ashes invite us to rediscover the secret of life.  We are dust, loved by God. We are ashes on which God has breathed the breath of life.

The first Scripture reading today is from the Book of Genesis and recounts the establishment of the Covenant with Noah and his descendants. 

God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you.  I will establish my covenant with you.”

Lent is deepening our awareness that we are people who have a Covenant with the Living God.  We are not just people who believe in God.  We are a people sought out by God, a people formed by God and a people with a special love relationship with God.  Only when we are deeply aware of His love for us can we truly accept that the cross is going to be a part of our spiritual journey.

Unless we firmly in a God who will never abandon us, it will be very challenging to make any sense out of the crosses of life.

In today’s Gospel, the evangelist Mark says: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.  He was among the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”

Jesus finding himself in the desert being tempted by the devil was not the result of bad luck or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Rather, this was by divine design.  Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.

Now this isn’t always true for ourselves.  Sometimes we can find ourselves in the desert of disappointment or failure, not led by the Spirit of God’s love but rather they are the result of bad choices we have made.  Our desire for pleasure, power, or greed can sometimes get the best of us and lead us into the wilderness. 

But with Jesus, he is being led by the Spirit of God’s love into the desert to be tempted by the devil to use his power in ways that are not in God’s plan.  The devil was tempting Jesus to become the Messiah without the cross.  The devil was tempting Jesus to take the short cut to achieve his power as the Messiah.

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be humbled, to be tested and tempted, to struggle with the forces of evil and thereby fully trust in God’s plan for His life. 

My question for you and for me is what desert are we now being let into by the Spirit of God’s love to be humbled, to be tested and tempted to validate our faith and trust in Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our lives?  Are you aware that you are being led by the Spirit of God in the ways you experience your Lenten journey today?

As you try to make sense out of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and in the senseless violence in the streets of our cities, as you have grieved the loss of someone you dearly love, as you have dealt with illness in your life and the in the life of a dear family member, as you have been hurt and your confidence has been betrayed, as you struggle with the temptation of pornography, as you have had to deal with more than your fair share of challenges, can you see these experiences as being led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.  Can these life wrenching experiences be example of how you are being led by the Spirit into the desert?  As we pray over the crosses of our lives, may you be assured that God never abandons us.

The Stations of the Cross describe the stages of the suffering and death of Jesus.  As we experience the stations of the cross of illness, of death, of brokenness in our own stories, may we too get the help of Simon of Cyrene and be strengthened by the love of Mary our mother.  As for Jesus, our own stations of the cross are our way of discipleship.

Back to today’s Gospel:  “He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.”  The wild beasts tell us that life is fragile.   There is no escaping the fragileness of the wild beasts in society.  There are also demons within ourselves.  Do we have a side within us that focuses only on our own pleasure instead of service of others.

Yes, there are demons; there is sinfulness in our lives that we seek to turn away from.  Yes, we encounter Satan in the desert of our inner wilderness.  But that is not the end of our Lenten journey.  The real purpose of our Lenten spiritual disciplines is that we are to encounter God in the desert of Lent.  May we allow ourselves to believe in His love.

The Lenten desert is about wrestling with the demons of our life; but the Lenten season is also about conversion; it is our retreat in which we encounter God with blessed and grateful hearts.  We embrace the spiritual disciplines of lent – we embrace prayer, fasting, almsgiving – so that we are clearly place God as first in our lives.

As the angels ministered to Jesus in the desert, thanks be to God we also have angels that minister to us, that are looking after us – renewing us.  The angels are the graces of our lives – human and divine.  We thank you Lord for all the people of our lives who are God’s messengers, God’s angels to us.  We give thanks for all the people who love us and reveal the face of God to us.

May your Lenten journey be very much blessed.