1st Sunday of Lent, Year C
First Reading: Dt 26:4-10
Second Reading: Rom 10:8-13
Gospel Reading: Lk 4:1-13

This Sunday is the first in Lent, the 40-day season of penance that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends the day before Easter. (Sundays are not counted.)

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Lent is “particularly appropriate” for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies and pilgrimages, and voluntary self-denial such as fasting, almsgiving, and works of charity.

It notes that “Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him,” aims first not at outward works but at interior conversion – “a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil.”

This “reorientation” demands recognition of who we are and who God is, as Moses told the people in the First Reading. It was God who, “with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” had rescued their ancestors from slavery in Egypt and given them “a land flowing with milk and honey.” It was fitting, therefore, that they offer him “the first of the fruit of the ground.”

Without such a “radical reorientation of our lives,” our exterior penances “remain sterile and false,” the Catechism says. On the other hand, “interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures, and works of penance.”

Interior conversion is not merely expressed, but also “accomplished in daily life,” by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, defence of justice, admission of one’s faults to others, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, and endurance of persecution.

“Taking up one’s cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.” However, “Scripture and the Fathers (of the Church) insist above all on three forms: “fasting, prayer and almsgiving.”

Many years ago, as editor of The B.C. Catholic, I published an “examination of conscience” in response to a request from a reader. A woman wrote to say she was appalled to see us suggest such a mechanical exercise. Surely, she said, Vatican II had changed all that, teaching us to focus not on our sins, but on our personal relationship with God.

I replied that since sin damages or even breaks off our personal relationship with God, restoring the relationship demands an examination of conscience, followed by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

It is the same with human relationships. Imagine being unfaithful to a lover or a spouse. How do we go about restoring the relationship?

First we have to admit our guilt, ask for forgiveness, and promise to change. Even then, we feel we cannot just pick up the relationship where it left off without making some sign of our change of heart.

We probably talk to our friend or spouse in a more caring and loving way than before. We do things to please them, like bringing them gifts. We also show ourselves ready, and even eager, to give up our own will in favour of theirs.

In other words, we restore the relationship by confession, contrition, a purpose of amendment, prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Now in relation to God, we are all unfaithful lovers. We have been tempted through the flesh, as when Satan tempted Jesus through his hunger; through the world, as when he tempted him with all the world’s kingdoms; and by the devil directly, as when he tempted him to bow down before him.

However, unlike Jesus, we have all succumbed to temptation. “If we say, ‘We are free of the guilt of sin,’ we deceive ourselves; the truth is not to be found in us,” St. John said. “But if we acknowledge our sins, he who is just can be trusted to forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrong.”

“No one who believes in him will be put to shame,” St. Paul says in the Second Reading. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”