1st Sunday of Lent C

See Commentary on Luke 4:1-13

Homily 1 - 2007

Away from the cities, out in the wilderness, far distant from the Temple. John the Baptist had been promising God’s immanent intervention - his long-awaited promise to bring change. John called for conversion.

Jesus was baptised by John, and immediately afterwards he had a remarkable religious experience: In the colourful language of the narrative, the heavens opened, the Spirit of God descended on him, and a voice addressed him proclaiming that he was God’s Son and was deeply loved by God.

Immediately afterwards Jesus left John and went further into the wilderness - alone.

When he eventually came forth, a long time afterwards, he was a changed man: he had a clear sense of mission; he engaged his world; and he was remarkably free from all fear.

Why did he go into the wilderness? Luke does not tell us much, other than that, as we heard in today’s Gospel reading, he was led there by the Spirit of God. What had happened to him there in the wilderness? No answer beyond that he was tempted.

Can we guess what else? That’s all we can do! He had been told by the voice he had heard in that experience after he was baptised that he was profoundly loved: He was indeed God’s beloved, and uniquely favoured. Perhaps he needed time alone to hear that... to let the truth reverberate into every corner of his being: his sense of who he was, his sense of the world in which he lived, his memories, his hopes and dreams, as well as his fears and insecurities.

He had to face his own inner world - from where other possibilities also emerged – what Luke called temptations : plausible possibilities, attractive alternatives. He faced himself. He chose God’s way. He accepted that he was indeed unconditionally beloved. He trusted the one who loved him. Confident and free, he engaged his world; and confronted the society that crushed and marginalised so many in the name of religion and also of peace.

It’s Lent: time for us to enter into our wilderness - those unexplored expanses of our own inner world. It’s time to let God’s word of Love, first spoken to us at our baptism, into every corner of our being, to trust the truth of ourselves as we learn to trust God’s Word to us – learning to believe God’s love that challenges every other voice of shame or fear or insecurity; letting go our need to control on the one hand and our death wish on the other.

Time spent in our wilderness alone with God has traditionally been called prayer. Other religious activities, too, are called prayer. This one is less explored, perhaps more frightening, certainly more transforming. The Jesus who came forth from the wilderness was so different from the one who went into it. That can be our experience, too, as we take the risk to surrender to love.

Homily 2 - 2013

Did you notice how the Pope announced his resignation? "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.  Well aware of the seriousness of this act, with complete freedom, I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, successor of St Peter."

I wonder what were the temptations he experienced in the process of reaching his decision.

Luke's [and Matthew's] description of Jesus' temptations can have the effect of our seeing them as pretty unreal.  Let us look at them more closely.

The first temptation showed Jesus feeling the pressure, fed by his hunger, to take the comfortable option to turn stones into bread, thereby using the miraculous power he suspected he had, not for the purpose of giving concrete expression to God's Kingdom, but simply to satisfy himself and make himself the centre of his world.

The second temptation may have been felt as the impatient, desperate, attraction of manipulation, or straight-out power, to control people's actions and to ensure their conformity, in preference to the slow, uncertain and often ineffective summons to true personal conversion. [This has been more a temptation for the later Church than for Jesus – though some in the crowds tried to force him, at least on one occasion, to become the powerful King/Messiah they wanted.]

As regards the third temptation, what was the difference, when all is said and done, between descending gently from the lofty pinnacle of the Temple to the cheers of a marvelling crowd below, and walking on water towards his frightened disciples?  What to do? And, more importantly, why?

The Gospel account gathered Jesus' temptations together  into the one handy package, and presented them immediately before Jesus began his ministry.  This can have the effect of unseating them altogether from the always changing, and sometimes confusing, circumstances of his unfolding ministry, with its ongoing encounters with crowds and disciples, and with religious and secular authorities - and their varying responses.

As his life unfolded unexpectedly, how did Jesus decide just what to do, and how to choose - in practice? Certainly he remained always open to his Father's Will.  But the issue for him, as it is for us, was: How do we tune in to God's Will?

"Love your neighbour as yourself" is non-negotiable as a guiding principle, but what does loving involve in the encounters and situations that fill every day? Life is a constant stream of practical, on-the-spot, decisions.  We don't have the time often to think much about them.  Our virtues [or lack of them] handle the ordinary, repetitious stuff.  But from time to time, other issues arise that we need to think about more carefully.

This is where temptations arise.  They come as the pressures or attractions that we feel to act against what we know we are really on about, who we really are; and to compromise our truer selves, our deeper integrity.

Listen again to how Pope Benedict put it: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."

It is conscience that gives the sense of how to choose, of what to do, right here and now.  It can be sensed in the peace and inner harmony that we feel [the certainty that Benedict came to] when something sits right with us, with the deeper us [deeper than the surface likes and dislikes], and with what we value as really important.

Pope Benedict mentioned that he examined his conscience before God.  To know the Will of God we need to be regularly trying to tune in to God.  This is so important - because God's will for us is always and only a will for life.  In learning to discern God's Will, "before God", we draw also on a number of different sources: what we have been taught about what is right and wrong, the sense we have been able to make of it, and the values that we see behind it; the convictions that have been forged through life experiences; the people who have impressed us… The list goes on.

To live means to choose.  And to choose is to be tempted.  Jesus has gone that way before us.

 Homily 3 - 2016

Jesus was perfectly at home in his own skin. He knew his human dignity. He knew that he was loved by God. He wanted to be human, fully human, fully alive. So crude self-interest was not his interest, nor was control over people, nor power, either coercive or manipulative. Consequently, temptation got nowhere with him, even though, being human, he genuinely felt its attractiveness. He was perfectly content to be simply who he was – with all the wonder, and the limitations, that that presented.

With Jesus’ experience as background, I would like to look today at the Lenten journey that we have just begun – during this year’s Year of Mercy. The occasion suggests that we consider the value of having a specially focussed time where we look again at the well-tried traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and alms-giving. Interestingly, Muslims opt for the same trio during their sacred period of Ramadan. There is something genuinely human in it, after all. I said above of Jesus in confronting his temptations that he was perfectly content to be simply who he was with all the wonder and all the limitations that that presented. I think a similar dynamic can be brought to bear here. Lent is the occasion to freshen our approach to the on-going invitation, made to us by God, basically to become fully alive. We usually do not look at life, particularly our Christian life, that way – hence the value of a recurring opportunity, such as Lent, to re-focus. Nor do we generally look at prayer, fasting and alms-giving under the heading of becoming fully alive. Let’s try it!

Prayer is basic – at least when understood as relating personally to God in quiet reflection or contemplation. It is where everything starts. Without prayer, we inevitably get Lent wrong. Prayer puts us in touch with God as the source of our being, our being alive and especially our being lovingly alive. Just by creating us, God, who after all is love, gave us something of God’s own essence. We become human, we become who we are, by drawing on our triple capacity to be, to live and to love. In a sense, God becomes enfleshed in each one of us, not only in Jesus [though perfectly so in him]. God becomes more wonderfully present within creation through human persons fully alive – through you and me, as we become ever more fully human, lovingly human, persons. 

This is where fasting comes in. It is a means to our becoming ever more genuinely human, lovingly human. Fasting is to be understood as the generic heading for the various shapes of inner discipline needed for that human growth to become real. It starts from the joyful appreciation of and wonder at our unique and individual humanness; and in this, it differs profoundly from dieting which is usually prompted by dissatisfaction at who we are and how we look and feel. Often it even masks a mild self-hatred. Fasting, on the contrary, expresses the desire to become more fully alive; and is a practical way to say thanks to the God who made us. A long time ago, Saint Irenaeus made the claim, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive”. 

The third traditional Lenten practice is alms-giving, best understood as embracing all practical reaching out to others in need. It, too, springs from our having been created to love, and becoming human through loving.  It is the ultimate expression of genuinely contemplative prayer. It is relational, reflective prayer’s purpose and practical fruit. Since authentic alms-giving flows from God’s gratuitous love for us and our response of love to God, it is not accompanied by any sense of superiority [or of mere pity for those who suffer]. It is certainly not a means simply of removing any awkward feelings of guilt, but is an outflow of human solidarity, and a celebration of human brother-and sisterhood. We need to love because that is what we are.

I wish you all a truly joyful and vital Lent!

Homily 4 - 2022 

Just before today’s Gospel passage, Luke had narrated how Jesus had made his way down to the Jordan River and, along with quite a crowd of other people, had been baptised there by John. He had then mentioned how Jesus, some time after his baptism, while he was praying, had undergone a life-changing experience. He heard a voice from somewhere saying to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you”. At the same time, the Holy Spirit had entered into him.

Luke then followed that up immediately with today’s incident, telling us that “Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness”, staying there for six weeks. He mentioned that Jesus “ate nothing, and at the end he was hungry” [something of an understatement, surely]. Surprisingly, perhaps, while there, he was “tempted by the devil”.

I think that many of our temptations are not temptations to do something wrong in itself. What may be more significant than what we do is why we do what we do and the extent that we seek to discern what God is asking of us.

Luke’s Gospel does not tell us what Jesus was doing during his six weeks in the wilderness. It would not surprise me if his thoughts turned towards his future. Would he become a close collaborator of John? Or would he break out alone? If alone, where would he start and what would he do?

How would he find the answers?He let himself be “led by the Spirit”. In that case, he would have needed to be closely tuned in to the guidance of the Spirit. He would need to engage ever more closely with the God who called him “his Son”. Effectively, he would need to pray. [On numerous occasions later in his Gospel, Luke would mention how Jesus regularly went off to pray.]

As we look at ourselves during this time leading up to Easter, do we find ourselves growing in love as we grow older? Or are we becoming more and more critical, or impatient? Or, perhaps more likely, are we loving some more dearly and becoming ever more critical of others? My sense is that we share in establishing the Kingdom of God only when what we do is motivated by love of God and respect for the God-given human dignity of ourselves and of our neighbour.

Personally, I think that the best thing we can do during Lent is to give more time to prayer — but not simply to saying more prayers. Most of us are probably saying enough prayers as it is. We may find it helpful to spend more prayer time listening, — listening to God present in our hearts, — becoming more familiar with the God who is loving us actively at every moment of every day and every night, — who cannot love us more than is already the case, — whose love is necessarily unconditional and always infinitely intense and tuned-in, — and who is loving everyone else no more and no less than us.

We still have what is left of our lives to discover more and more the profound wonder and beauty of our God.