Gospel Reflection Sunday February 18th 2024 – First Sunday of Lent

With Brian Maher OMI

For me, the trouble with Lent is that it happens every year!  
By that, I mean that what should be an intense and focused preparation for the central feast of the Christian calendar becomes another routine we go through for forty days before we arrive at yet another Holy Week, just like all the others with its ceremonies of the Last Supper, Passion and Death, Easter Vigil, Resurrection and Easter Sunday. We begin, many of us, with flipping pancakes, and we finish, many of us, with chocolate and Easter Bunnies!  

How sad that is. Each year, we lose out on another chance to truly encounter the person of Jesus, walk with him through the horrendous and unjust trauma of his arrest, torture and death, emerging on Easter Sunday morning with him, risen from the Dead and glorified as our living God.  

The events of Easter Week, each one of them, are mind-blowing when we allow ourselves to think about them. The same person who entered Jerusalem and was proclaimed by the crowds as a ‘King’ kneels like a servant before his followers and washes their feet. “I leave you an example…” he says, “…that you should follow in my name.”  
What could he have meant by doing that? What example was he leaving us? How should we follow that example today in our world? The washing of his disciple’s feet is so hugely important that it is the only memory John’s Gospel carries of the Last Supper.  

Not content at leaving us with this challenge, Jesus takes the bread of their meal, gives it to them and says, strangely, “This is my body, given for you.” And he does the same with the wine, “This is my blood, poured out for you. Just as he did when he washed their feet, he left his followers with the task of working out what he meant by “I leave you an example that you should follow….”, so now he issues another challenge, “Do this in remembrance of me….”   
What did he mean by his words? Was he serious? What was he actually asking his followers to do “in memory of him.” And then, as we know, he calmly went into the night to face his death.  

All of these questions. All of this richness. Lent is intended to give us the opportunity to quietly and peacefully reflect on each one of them. So that when Holy Thursday comes around, we might be touched by the Lord we have met during Lent and leap up shouting, “That’s it! This is what he meant…” or “…now I understand it. Now I know what he asks of me today, in 2024, as his disciple.”  

And all of this before we even arrive at Good Friday. How do we prepare ourselves to walk with Jesus in those last hours of his life? If those closest to him, Peter and the others, were unable to be with him on this final journey, how can we hope to do so?  

The misery, the injustice, the pain, the humiliation, the horror of a man who spent his life healing, forgiving and talking of God’s love, being spat upon, crowned with thorns and paraded through the streets of Jerusalem as a criminal, carrying his own cross of execution is too much to comprehend. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to be blindly swept along by its movement, watching in tears as good is destroyed and evil triumphs.  

Good Friday without Easter Sunday is just that, the triumph of evil over good. And just as Jesus had to make his own sad journey through it, so must we. We don’t have to look very far in our world to see evil triumph over good, to see greed, ambition, lies, deception and hatred triumph over generosity, truth, gentleness and love. Is this why the altars in our Churches are bare on Good Friday and our tabernacles empty? Because we are seeing good defeated and evil triumph.  

None of us can escape pain and suffering in our lives. They are a part of who we are as human beings – imperfect, weak, vulnerable, fragile. Just as Jesus had to carry his cross and die on it, so must we.  
Lent offers the opportunity for us to enter into the mystery of pain, suffering and loss that is Good Friday. In the quiet moments of Lent, we can, walking with Jesus and talking to him in prayer, ponder the mystery of Good Friday, not defeated by it, not escaping from it, but moving through it to what came next for Jesus….and for us.  

Holy Week gives us more questions to ponder and thoughts to reflect upon than we could ever do in one forty-day preparation period. But maybe this Lent could be a start, and next Lent continue from where we left off with Jesus… and the following year the same, until we come face to face with Jesus and can say, “I really did come to know you during my Lenten periods in the desert.” And Jesus will smile and will say back to us, “I know. I was there with you.”  

There is so much to ponder before we even reach the greatest mystery of all – the Resurrection. What questions must that pose for us, and what wonders does it open for us?  The marvel of the Holy Week journey is that no matter how hard we try to enter into the sufferings of Jesus, we already know that Good Friday is not the end. Just like the pain of labour for a mother is forgotten in the joy of holding her newborn child, so too the defeat of Good Friday is lost in the joy and triumph of the Resurrection.  

In the Acts of the Apostles, it is interesting to note that the new definition of Apostle is a ‘witness to the Resurrection.’ Time after time, in the preaching of Peter and the others, a person is called an ‘Apostle’ if she/he is a witness to the Resurrection.  

I believe the greatest challenge of all in the Easter story is truly believing in the Resurrection and then being a witness to it. Good Friday is, in one sense, easy because we cannot escape pain and suffering. It is within us and around us. For better or worse, it sweeps us along, taking us to places we often do not wish to go.   

Resurrection, however, is more nebulous and has less immediate impact on our lives. We can miss it, not see it, mistake it for something else or simply deny it if we are not careful. In the garden on Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene thought she was talking to a ‘gardener’ when, in fact, it was Jesus. On the Road to Emmaus, the two disciples thought they were talking to a ‘stranger’ when, in fact, it was Jesus who walked along with them. Resurrection was an alien or new concept for them. The triumph of darkness over light they could see in the cross. It was imprinted on their minds. They couldn’t miss it. But they had to search around, ask questions, entertain doubts, and it took time to spot that Jesus was alive again, risen from the dead and with them. We might expect that the Resurrection would be obvious to them and they would quickly realise that Jesus was once again with them, but that is not the way it worked. Pentecost was the breakthrough for them, and that did not happen on Easter Sunday morning!  

Each day, I look at the news, and I see the horrific scenes of death and suffering in the faces of men, women and children in places of war and terror. In pollution, rising global temperature, the extinction of so much life around us, and the refusal by Governments around the world to see what is happening to our planet, I see the faces of greed, power and wealth. All of this drama is Good Friday, and it surrounds us, sweeping us along in its wake.  

To spot the Resurrection I have to stop and wait a while. In the faces of doctors, nurses, paramedics, ambulance drivers, firefighters, NATO and other Relief Agency workers, I can, if I look, spot the Resurrection at work. In the children playing in the rubble of streets and laughing with each other and in the mothers and fathers who remain resilient for the sake of their children, I can, if I look, see the Resurrection, the unquenchable hope and goodness which is also part of the human spirit.  

Lent is, perhaps, an opportunity to pause and take stock. A chance to change glasses and look at things through the lens of the Resurrection.   
An Apostle is a witness to the Resurrection, not to the cross. When Pope Francis, in 2013, said “We must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!” (EG 10) or again in the same document that, “…There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter!” (EG 6) surely that was what he was talking about.  
Jesus is Risen and with us. That is the Easter message, and it is the end point of our Lenten journey. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, this year, this Lent, we took time to do what Lent gives us the opportunity to do – to prepare ourselves to celebrate Easter 2024 properly.  

Giving up sweets, wine, beer, chocolate, etc. and doing all kinds of other penances during Lent are good and worthwhile. But only if they free us from the distractions which prevent us from taking the time and space to reflect on the Easter story and its many challenges.  

In today’s Gospel, Mark tells us that “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.”  
That’s all Mark tells us about Jesus’ temptations. He makes no mention of individual temptations or anything other than he was ‘tested by Satan and angels waited on him’. In that statement, isn’t Mark saying that Jesus, in his desert, experienced both Cross and Resurrection?  
When he came out of the desert, whatever happened there enabled him to begin his journey to his own Cross and Resurrection. He “… came to Galilee proclaiming the good news of God” and saying, “The time has come, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the good news.”  

Lent is and must be for us, Good News.  
As I begin my Lent journey this year, I pray that I will allow myself more time and more space to be with Jesus in the Gospels. Help me, Lord, to prepare myself to fully enter into the mysteries of the Cross and Resurrection, both in my own life and in the life of our world.  

Many thanks,
Brian.

If you have any comments, questions or thoughts on this scripture reflection, please feel welcome to email me at b.maher@oblates.ie

Jesus was tempted by Satan, and the angels looked after him