1 Lent: February 17/18, 2024

Change our hearts this time, your word says it can be.
Change our minds, this time, your life can be make us free.
We are your people your call set a-part.
Lord this time, change our hearts.

    Like Noah and his family after the waters of the flood – through the life-giving waters of Baptism God sets us apart through a call to be God’s people.  God makes a covenant with us - God will always be there for us and God expects us to live our lives in gratitude for all the blessings showered down upon us.

    As St. Peter reminds those in Galatia, Cappadocia, and Asia as he sends them a letter - Baptism – is not a removal of dirt from the body – but an appeal to God for a clear conscience.
    However clean our conscience may be after Baptism, they usually don’t stay that way. 
 We get so bombarded by contrasting values to the Gospel –which pull us in may different directions and so we easily get lost and confused.
We get tempted to follow the ways of the world rather than remaining faithful to God and kingdom values.
    But God can change our hearts - long after the waters of Baptism have touched our heads.   God can change our minds.   
The grace God gives us can make us free from all the things in the world that are trying to pull us down.
    This time – this Lent - can be a  time of renewal, refocus, and readjustment – through prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  A time to be healed –  a time of fulfillment - assuming we want it to be.
    
    Because like that man we heard about on Ash Wednesday who was ill for 38 years – sitting by the pool of Bethesda, never getting into the water – we can grow so comfortable with our lives and our faith and want to just stay the way we are  – and so we don’t see the need or have the desire to change.
    We can become so complacent, that we don’t even see our sins or our need for Jesus to heal us.
    So we need God to take us, move and shake us – we need to be disturbed - so God can make us anew.
    The desert is a great place to go to get disturbed –
    It’s quiet – which might scare a lot of us – because we’re not used to it. . . We’re used to our lives being constantly filled with noise - from the television, from our phones, from the street, from the dogs barking and sirens blaring.  But we need the quiet  of the desert to think and pray.

    The desert is also a place of solitude, a place where we are alone - which, again, scares many of us.  We like being in the thick of things, constantly on the go, surrounded by people and things.  But we need the solitude of the desert to think and to pray.
But: think and pray about what??  About what is holding us back from God.  About what distracts us from embracing Gospel values.  About what needs to change in  us in order for us to be more Christ-like.
Pope Francis in his Lenten message for 2024, states that “through the desert, God leads us to freedom.”

He continues, “the desert is a place where our freedom can mature in a personal decision NOT to fall back into all the things that enslave us and keep us from being the people God is calling us to be.”

Today’s Gospel from St. Mark presents us with a short version of the Temptation of Jesus in the desert.  Both St. Matthew and St. Luke in their Gospels give many more details about the temptations Jesus faced.
But Mark simply states the fact that Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit, where he was tempted by satan.  Jesus was driven into the desert by the Spirit — which meant God wanted him to be there.  
And after Jesus faced down his temptations - he was stronger in Spirit, more assured of who he was and what he stood for – and began his ministry by announcing the kingdom of God was at hand.
The same thing can happen to us – God wants us to go to the desert from time to time - to b e strengthen and renewed.
  Which may mean we simply go to our room, close the door, and sit in quiet.
It may mean that at the end of the day, before going to sleep, we review our day and thank God for the good things that happened, and ask God’s help for the things that did not go so well or still need to be resolved.
It may mean that we retreat from the busyness of our daily lives and go out for a long walk in a park or in a woods – any place where we can clear our minds and open our hearts to listen to God speak to us.
Ant there in the desert – can we allow God’s voice to disturb us enough to identify our temptations – to name them, claim them, deal with them and overcome them – so we can be stronger in Spirit, more assured of who we are and what we stand for – and then go out and proclaim the Good News of the Gospel??



We go to the desert to get disturbed – shaken from our complaceny - awakened to the awareness that the clear conscience we had after our Baptism needs to be renewed and refreshed by asking:
What is the greatest temptation in our lives?  Perhaps we struggle with a habit or sin that we fail at time and time again.
Perhaps it’s a temptation of the flesh:  eating, drinking, smoking, or viewing inappropriate materials –  way too much.
Perhaps we struggle with anger, self-righteousness, dishonesty, greed, lust, gossip, or negativity.

Whatever our temptation may be, we need to name it, claim it, deal with it and over come it –  knowing we have all we need to do this–  because of the grace given to us through our Baptism, strengthened by our Confirmation, and fed on a regular basis by our participation in the Eucharist.
God can change our hearts and minds.  The grace God gives us can make us free from all the things in the world that are trying to pull us down and keeping us from being the best version of ourselves – the person God is calling us to be.
If we spend time in the desert God can disturb us and lead us to freedom.
SO

Change our hearts this time, your word says it can be.
Change our minds, this time, your life can make us free.
We are your people your call set a-part.
Lord this time, change our hearts.


 


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