““Your paths, O God, are love and faithfulness” (Ps. 25)”
The first Sunday of Lent is an invitation to examine one’s path. In Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus driven into the desert by the Spirit after his baptism in the Jordan. He was immersed in the waters of cleansing and healing. Did he need cleansing and healing? No, but we might, and Jesus is always leaving an example if we choose to see it.
Jesus journeyed into the desert wilderness for forty days. We have been journeying in a COVID wilderness for much longer than forty days. We feel like we’re surrounded by wild beasts and angry politicians and sometimes feel tempted to impatience with disgruntled citizens. However, we have also been accompanied by angels in the form of committed and kind health-care workers, brave front-line men and women who daily cater to our needs and the needs of society.
When Jesus returned from his desert experience, he invited Galileans and all of us into the spirit of repentance as he announced the Good News of the Kin-dom. To repent, I need to enter into deeper reflection and discernment to recognize the incongruity of my ways and the ways of society. Sometimes I hear challenges posed by the media that stir up dissension and unrest, that spatter others with doubt and worry. Can I use these forty days to consider the invitation to believe and live and spread the Good News? Can I renew the covenant of faith by recognizing the presence of angels in my midst, and by working to dispel the harm of critical and negative voices? Might I see the sign of a renewed covenant in the beauty of creation, in the wholeness of humanity, in the lower numbers of infections from the pandemic, and in the new life promised by the unfolding vaccination program? May I live in renewed hope and trust?
-Sister Helen Russell, csj