First Sunday of Lent

Deacon Johnny Flores’ Homily for the First Sunday of Lent

We’ve had quite a week, haven’t we!

We lost power, heat, and water.

Ordinarily, we would be thinking about what we should give up for Lent right now. But this year, it seems we already gave up a lot.

We gave up comfort, we gave up community, we even gave up loved ones.

But have we learned anything?

What have you done with more time at home?

Has almost a week of cold and dark given you a new perspective on life?

One response that I’ve seen is anger. Anger at the utility companies. Anger at the government. Anger at not knowing whom to blame. Anger at the unnamed “them.”

But there is no “them” in the human family. There is only “us.”

I wonder if Noah’s family felt anger?

Anger at the flood, anger at the animals they had to live with, anger at God. No doubt they had a rough time of it.

But the story of Noah tells us that, after the ordeal of the flood, Noah and his family built an altar, made sacrifices to God, in praise and thanksgiving!

God renewed His covenant with Noah’s family. He tells them that the rainbow will be the sign of His promise to never destroy mankind again.

In the Gospel today, we see Jesus allowing himself to be led into the desert. Like Noah and his family, he gives up his comfort and goes where the Spirit directs him.

We know the details of Jesus’s ordeal in the desert, thirst, hunger, temptation, from the other Gospels.

Mark’s version is less detailed; he focuses on the main point, Jesus’s time in the desert.

We just experienced a modern version of a desert. Our usual creature comforts were taken away and some of us found ourselves alone in the cold and in the dark.

Can we accept that isolation the way that Noah and his family accepted their challenges? Can we use it to improve our spiritual strength as Jesus did?

I’ve heard it said that the trick to fasting is not to struggle against our appetites, but to acquire a taste for simplicity and austerity.

In the very early days of Christianity, men and women went out into the desert to grow spiritually. Some of these hermits contributed much to our modern understandings of spirituality and humility. Even today, men and women remove themselves from the noise of our culture and place themselves in silence and communion with God.

Our response to the trials we experienced last year and even last week should help us in our spiritual life.

Instead of looking for blame, maybe we should be looking for forgiveness. All of us have made mistakes have sinned against God.

But God always forgives those who ask.

The promise of the rainbow is just one of the signs that God gives to show His love. He will always love us, no matter what.

When we sin, we sin against the Creator, the Father of us all. But God doesn’t destroy us when we sin against Him, He forgives us! If the Almighty God can forgive us, what right do we have to be angry with someone else?

Jesus went to the cross for us. How minor is it for us to give up anger and recrimination and instead forgive those who may have hurt us?

This is the first Sunday of Lent. We are at the beginning of our own forty days of fasting and prayer.

It is not a coincidence that God flooded the earth for forty days and forty nights. It is not a coincidence that Jesus fasted and prayed in the desert for forty days and forty nights. A long time is needed to rid ourselves of our connection to the material.

Our shared pains this past week can be a wonderful blessing if we let it. Most of us went without light and heat. We all dealt with problems with our water supply.

We can think of these difficulties as time in the wilderness.

But how many of our brothers and sisters deal with these problems every day?

Our recent time in the fasting from our normal comfort should remind us of how much we have and how little others have.

We should take the experiences of this past week as an opportunity to share in their constant struggles. Let our response be a renewed sense of solidarity with the whole human family.

Remember the poor here in San Antonio who do not have insulated homes and central heat.

Remember the poor around the world who struggle every day to obtain clean drinking water.

Remember the homeless without warm clothing and a roof over their heads.

We come together today as the human family, the Family of God, the Body of Christ. We share in the joys and successes of life. But so, too, do we share our pain, our troubles, our mistakes together.

Do not be angry towards those who may have failed us in the recent crises. They are also part of our family.

This Lent, let our little everyday sacrifices be prayers for those less fortunate than ourselves.

Let us make contributions from our hearts.

Let us make a special effort to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation.

And when our comforts are suspended for a while, let us remember our brothers and sisters.

When you think about making a sacrifice this Lent, remember these verses from Psalm 51:

For in sacrifice you take no delight,
burnt offering from me you would refuse,
my sacrifice, a contrite spirit.
A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.

Remember that God forgives you always when you return to Him. The smile of a child, the colors of the sunset, the buds on the trees, are all part of the rainbow that God shows to us to remind us that He is always with us.

When you pray during the Eucharistic celebration, remember the challenges you felt this past week and remember the trials that Jesus endured for us.

Use this time, as we heard in the Collect today, to grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ.

And remember our everyday rainbows.