2/14/2016 – 1st Sunday of Lent – Cycle C - Luke 4:1-13

      Here we are at the beginning of our Lenten journey on this first Sunday of Lent.  We started Lent last week, as we commemorated Ash Wednesday.  Our masses are always full on that day, with the faithful wanting to publicly declare their desire to turn away from sin and the follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I bet many of you feel the same way I do about Lent.  I really look forward to the Lenten journey each year.  I look forward to this time when we can deepen our understanding of our Catholic faith, of participating in a liturgical season that brings us time for renewal, reflection, and new beginnings. 

       On the first Sunday of Lent, the Gospel reading is always about Jesus being tempted in the desert.  Indeed, the 40 days of Lent correspond to Jesus’ own forty days spent in the desert. For Jesus, it was a period of preparation for his coming mission.  At the end of the 40 days, Jesus is tempted by the Devil. 

        We all face our own temptations and our own obstacles in our own journey of faith, don’t we?  As we hear Jesus stand up to the Devil and those things that tempt him, we might think about the ways our Lenten journey and our Lenten disciplines can help us turn away from our sins and our temptations and to help us more fully incorporate the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our daily journey of faith.

        We Catholics should have cemented in our minds the main pillars of our Lenten journey: fasting, prayer, and acts of charity and mercy.  On this first Sunday of Lent, I want to bring up how important our Lenten prayer devotions are to this journey.  It is interesting to see in Bible Belt Mississippi how many other Christian denominations are adapting our Catholic Lenten devotions to their own faith, such as the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the foot washing ritual on Holy Thursday, the veneration of the cross on Good Friday, the stations of the cross on Fridays, and even our Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday.  Many of neighboring churches are not practicing these same Lenten devotions that we Catholics have practiced since the Early Church.  Having grown up in the Methodist faith myself as a child and a youth, I know that these practices were never something we did in the Methodist Church, and in fact, I always envied my Catholic friends who went to church on Ash Wednesday and received ashes on their foreheads. To me, with the other denominations adopting these practices, it shows how important it is to pass them down to our children and to follow them in our own families.

         Actually, it surprised me a couple of years ago when I was visiting the religious education classes in our parish right around the Lenten season when a high school student from a very involved family in our parish asked me what the stations of the cross was, that he had no idea what I was talking about and that he had never had been before. This past Friday, we had the stations of the cross for the first time this year, and to be honest, I was very disappointed at the low turnout, especially at seeing how few children and youth attended.  We need to take time out of our busy lives to really live out our faith and our traditions and devotions.  We have stations of the cross 3 times each Friday during Lent: 12:10 and 6:00 pm in English and 7:00 pm in Spanish.  Please join us for our many Lenten activities this year.

      Lent has a special significance this year in the midst of our celebration of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  Our liturgy committee has chosen to focus on the spiritual and corporal works of mercy this year during Lent.  We have the spiritual works of mercy and the corporal works of mercy.  Many of our readings during the Lenten season can be seen as being directly related to the works of mercy that we are called to practice as Catholics.  We can have a lot of types of hunger in our lives.  And physical hunger is one type of hunger we can have.   The first temptation Jesus goes through in his journey in the desert is to turn a stone into bread in order to satisfy his physical hunger. And one of the corporal works of mercy is feeding the hungry. Even though we live in a land of plenty, in a country where we export food to feed many people throughout the world, we are also a country where hunger is a big issue.  This year we are going to have different lay reflections during our Sunday masses during Lent.  Andrew Bataille, a long-time parishioner at St James, is very involved at St Luke Food Bank, an organization that feeds a lot of people here in Tupelo. We are going to hear from Andrew today in how feeding the hungry is one way Andrew serves the Lord as a follower of Christ.