Today is Lent’s second beginning. The first was Ash Wednesday. The second is this First Sunday. It’s a solemn moment, and that is why we began with the Litany of the Saints.
May I offer some catechesis?
The English word ‘Lent’ originally meant Springtime. And that ancient usage is probably connected with the word ‘lengthen’. It is at this time of the year we begin finally to feel the days lengthening. It can be an inspiring thought: Lent a springtime of the soul, Lent a season when the reach of God’s word can extend itself in our lives, Lent a time of spiritual and practical new life pushing upwards through what’s old and frosty in us.
Today Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit in the wake of his Baptism, goes into the desert. He’s there for 40 days. So, our Lent is an “imitation of Christ”; he provides the pattern. There are other biblical precedents too, worth weaving into it. Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days, communing with the Lord, receiving the commandments; our Lent is a listening to the divine Voice. Goliath the Philistine stood against the people of Israel for 40 days, a type of our spiritual enemy the devil, until David went against him and slew him; Christ is our David. In the strength of the bread and water given him by the angel, Elijah walked to the mountain of God; the sacraments empower us especially at this time. The prophet Jonah spent 40 days preaching repentance to the people of Nineveh, who did repent; Lent means conversion. All these examples can give guidance and hope. The people of Israel spent 40 years travelling through the desert towards the promised land. 40 days, 40 years, are a symbol of our lives.
In the desert, Jesus is tempted or tested by the devil. This happens three times, suggesting the assaults came from every angle. The devil roams around the mysterious novelty of God’s Son, looking for a chink in the wall. Our Christian life is a spiritual combat with the powers of evil. Jesus, with the sword of the Word, defeated Satan, and in him, thanks to him, we can too. As the famous Civil Rights anthem goes, “We shall overcome.” That is the message of this Sunday.
Jesus refuses to abuse his own power as God’s Son. He won’t change stones into bread, a cheap, self-satisfying miracle. He won’t compromise himself for political power and earthly possessions. He won’t abuse his Father’s love by performing a stunt to become a celebrity. He remains his Father’s obedient Son. Doing so, he reverses the falls of Adam and Eve in the garden, of Israel (many times) in the desert, of David’s son, Solomon, who couldn’t resist the pull of lust and wealth and military strength. These are all paradigms of human failure and the disasters that follow; they are always being replayed, domestically, geopolitically, large scale, small scale. And they seem to define us. But the message of today is that they needn’t. We can be defined by Jesus, “overturning all the snares of the ancient serpent”. Through baptism, we become God’s children, his daughters and sons, “sons in the Son”, and in him we can remain in the attitude of trust, of worship, of sonship. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High and abides in the shade of the Almighty, says to the Lord’ my refuge, my stronghold, my God in whom I trust.” We can overcome – by humility.
And Jesus fasts. So Lent echoes that. And to fasting we add almsgiving and prayer. By fasting we overcome our passion for pleasure, for self-gratification. By almsgiving, our selfishness, our hoarding, our obsession with having can be turned into giving and sharing. By prayer, our love of independence, of false pride can be turned into the joy of having a Father. By prayer, fasting and almsgiving, we carry the attack into the enemy’s camp.
Here’s something specific. We are in the Jubilee Year, and in a Jubilee Year we are offered what the Church calls “indulgences”. God’s forgiveness of us call fill us more completely. On our side, they entail a gesture of prayer and good deeds. Interestingly, among the latter there was mention of… a certain fasting from the use of social media. It might do us no harm to embrace this. When we fast, we don’t stop eating altogether, and we’re not being called to bin our smart phones etc at all. But we can give ourselves a break. There is something amiss if these devices become what we run to in every vacant moment, checking for messages 80 times a minute or whatever. Some disentangling of ourselves here might do us good. These things can expose us to trivia, and beyond trivia to real and sinful temptations, degrading stuff. We need to retrieve our freedom. Why not give ourselves little technological sabbaths at different moments? To be offline for half an hour won’t be fatal. We’re doing something to our brains by incessant, 24/7 use of these things. We’re becoming addicts. We’re losing our capacity to focus on serious matters for more than a few minutes, our concentration is being eroded, the quick and the instant are running us. Solitude becomes unbearable, but it’s in solitude good and great things can come to birth in us. In solitude we realise we are really not alone, because someone greater is with us. Worst of all perhaps, to the devil’s great joy, we’ve found a way of evading prayer. Even physically, there’s something strange going on: we’re all bent over looking at our devices. In Sweden, road-signs are now put on the pavement to stop people walking into each other, or into the traffic. The Lord made us upright. Of course, of course, there is a good, even a beautiful use of these things. Grace is everywhere, grace declines no means. But Lent suggests that, through a certain fasting, we check that we are using these things and not them us; that we are free, not slaves. Our Lord was always free, but I suspect when he emerged from the desert, temptation behind him, he felt that freedom more than ever. And freedom is the grace of Lent.
St Mary’s Cathedral, 9 March 2025
