.FLASHBACK: OUR ASH WEDNESDAY PROMISES FOR LENT

On Ash Wednesday we promised that this time our Lenten days would be for us “more than engagement in inconsequential prayer, fasting and almsgiving.” Instead, we would do whatever God’s grace is inspiring us to do and be the Jesus of today, “removing what contaminates and weakens our commitment to what we promised to be in our Baptismal promises that we will be renewing in our Easter Sunday Liturgy.”

So, to what did each of us promise God that we would let the Spirit do with us? How did we respond to the questions in last week’s post? Have we availed ourselves to the promptings of the Spirit and begun our Lenten renewal which is leading us to this year’s personal Easter Resurrection?

(If you missed doing this, it is not too late to create your Lenten plan. My plan is to spend these forty days being more attune to hear God calling and directing me in the words and actions of those in my daily life and responding, “Not my will but Thy will be done” through me and through us cooperating with each other, serving each other and allowing the other to serve me. That is my response to these questions from last week’s post.)

• What in me, in my ways of thinking, speaking, listening and acting has to be sifted out of the wheat with a God-focused sieve so that I will rise to newness of life with Jesus on Easter?
• What must I do to consent and enable God, not myself and others, to be the potter who is molding me into whatever God desires?
• What can I do that will enable me to speak words and produce deeds which, rather than originating in the dictates of my own mind , they are welling up from the longing for God that was implanted in me at the very beginning of my life – which the Holy Spirit’s graces have been offered but rejected by me?
• How much better of a Christ-follower, a true disciple, will I be during the rest of my life because I, like Jesus, am offering my life to God for others?

THIS WEEK’S POST:

“The devil said to Jesus,
‘If you are the Son of God,
command this stone to become bread.’

Jesus said, ‘It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”’
. . . . Then he took him up and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and said to him,
‘All this will be yours, if you worship me.’
Then he led him to the parapet of the temple, and said to him,
‘Throw yourself down from here, for it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Luke 4:3-9

Here we are in 2025 and, like Jesus, we are on a “mini-retreat” into a Lenten desert, trying to discern what this year’s growth into a truer disciple of Jesus will be like for each one of us, and for us as a parish community.  We know the situation: how our homes, towns, country and world are, and how we (and God) know what they could be, with a little more effort from each of us. We, like Jesus in the desert, are pondering whether or not to step into our roles as God’s disciples, spreading the news of God’s goodness into all these locales. What will be the focus of my 2025 journey into God? What will be my ministerial contribution to establishing the kingdom and kinship of God in our really God’s world?

Deep down inside you and I know what the right choices are – not those effortless, quick fixes presented to Jesus by the devil. The right choices are those that require our efforts to become more ethical, more communal, more intellectual, more emotionally stable, more spiritual, . . . more Christ-like. They require making time for prayer, study and soul-searching for truth and justice – not theoretical, but concrete and from the heart. This requires probing into the nature of God and humanity, a willingness to see ourselves and each other as we are in the eyes of God.

Who are you and who am I right here – today- at this very moment and what do I sense that God “knows” each of us could become if we, like Jesus responding to the devil, would say and mean:

• “I do not live on bread alone.”
• I worship the Lord, my God, and he alone do I serve.”
• I will not put the Lord, my God, to the test.”

What conversions of mind and heart am I going to make that will open me more to being God’s minister in each event and encounter of this year’s Lenten season?

I can squander my time using the “dough of money” to create a material empire for myself, in being sloppy about developing my true humanness as God is encouraging me to do. Or I can throw myself from a tall building and expecting God to send His angels down to save me. Yes, God gives me the freedom to do what I want, to do what pleases me or motivates me at this moment in time, but the truth is that in every age, including that of today, we need to face our tendencies to make bad choices. If we don’t, what will happen? Sadly, more things like the horrors we hear in the news each day.

As we come to Mass this weekend, let’s do some post-Mass pondering of this:  What are the temptations facing me in my 2025 Lenten desert? What is my 2025 post-Lent life going to be like? What are my 2025 journey into God and my 2025 ministerial contributions going to be and will they be the best I can offer to create, support and further the establishment of the kingdom and kinship of God in our (really God’s) world or will they be my giving into the devil’s temptings?

Sister Loretta