Fifth Sunday of Lent Year C
Familiarity with this story has made most of us inattentive to gaping holes in the narrative.
First, this famous incident took place within the precinct of the Temple, and this is no insignificant detail. Why would this woman be brought into the precinct of the Temple, even if this took place in the outer Court of Women? Shouldn’t the scribes and Pharisees who were most careful about matters concerning ritual purity know that to have a public sinner dragged into the compound of the House of God would be a great affront to God Himself?
Second, who was this unnamed woman? Is she the same woman in Luke 7:47-49 who entered the house of Simon the Pharisee and bathed the Lord’s feet with her tears? And to think that this woman was forgiven once and now caught in another compromising situation? Shouldn’t she deserve a more severe punishment for this repeat offence?
Thirdly, and this may seem oddest of all - the Lord’s parting words to this woman are, “go away, and do not sin anymore.” Curiously, Saint John does not report any penitential resolve on the part of the woman. Although the Lord also does not condemn her, neither does He absolve her of her sin.
But the fourth mystery of this story is one which has puzzled most scholars and commentators, and given rise to many speculations - what was our Lord writing on the ground? One common answer was that He was writing the names of the men, many of whom were standing in the crowd accusing this woman, guilty of having committed the act of adultery or fornication with this woman. This is a plausible answer as no one can commit adultery or fornication alone by himself or herself - it takes two to tango. This may be reminiscent of the prophet Jeremiah’s scribbling the sins of the Israelites.
But there is also another possibility offered by St Thomas Aquinas. He sees in this woman a symbol and representative of sinful humanity, and like fallen humanity, she is in need of mercy, even though her accusers demand justice. There seems no way out. According to St John Paul II, her accusers “intend to show that (Christ’s) teaching on God’s merciful love contradicts the Law, which punished the sin of adultery with stoning.” How can God be just and yet merciful toward our fallen human race? But then something wonderful happens. Jesus bends down and begins to write in the earth. And this is all done in silence. What does this mean?
St Thomas Aquinas, with the keenness of his mystical insight, says that this action signifies that God in His mercy is stooping down to assist sinful humanity. In fact, he says, that whenever Jesus stoops down, this signifies an act of God’s mercy, and that whenever He stands up straight, this signifies an act of God’s justice. For the Greek word for justice literally means, “uprightness.” It is the same word in the Greek for what Jesus is doing by standing upright. But what does the writing in the earth signify? The Greek word there is katagraphein. It is a hapax legomenon, which is to say that it is a unique word which appears only once in the New Testament, and that is here. It doesn’t exactly mean “write”—that would be graphein—but katagraphein means “to engrave.”
What was our Lord “engraving”? We return to the Old Testament to see how God engraves the commandments with His finger in the tablets of stone. So the Fathers of the Church say that the Lord is here writing the commandments into the earth. But according to St Thomas, this act also signifies the mystery of the Incarnation—when by the finger of God, the Holy Spirit, the eternal Word was written into our human nature, as Isaiah the prophet once wrote: “Let the heavens rain down the Just One and the earth bring forth a Saviour” (Isa 45:8). The earth is a fit symbol for human nature since God had shaped the first man from the earth. And all this is done in silence to signify the ineffability of this mystery. It is as if Jesus is saying to the scribes and Pharisees: “Yes, according to Moses she ought to be condemned and stoned to death, but now through the Incarnation, mercy has been made available to her. Therefore, there is now hope for sinners.” Jesus is the perfect sin offering, the Lamb of God, who truly takes away the sins of the world.
But the scribes and Pharisees do not understand the mystery, and they break the reverent silence with a cacophony of cries: they want justice, they want blood. And as they continued to ask Him, our Lord stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” By straightening up, our Lord is now signifying that He is dispensing justice by passing judgment. They have asked for justice and justice they will receive, but now it is they who also stand accused. Our Lord does not pass judgment on this woman but on her accusers. But let us be clear that the Lord does not make excuses for the sins of this woman. He does not deny that she deserves death, but He adds to this that so do these scribes and Pharisees. Mercy is never given to the deserving. It is always offered to the undeserving, if it is to be mercy.
But what happens next? Our Lord stoops down again, as if to offer mercy to the newly accused. And this time He begins to write again, but the word now is graphein. He is not engraving but simply writing lightly in the earth, and as you all know, that whatever is written in sand, is malleable and can be easily erased. And the Fathers of the Church tell us that now He is writing their sins, but lightly as if to indicate that these can be easily wiped away, if only they will accept that they too need God’s mercy. How often do we fail to grasp this? How often have we etched and engraved the sins of others in our hearts as we refuse to forgive them but we forget that our sins are so quickly and easily absolved by God, as would writings in the sand be simply erased with a sweep of the hand?
Then what happens last of all? Our Lord stands up again to render His judgment, a judgment both just and merciful: Our Lord looked up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And she is right - all her accusers have fled the scene in shame - they who deserve God’s judgment had been reminded by the Lord that they too have been recipients of His mercy. How could they demand a different standard for this woman? The woman now stands upright because she has been justified by the mercy of Christ, not because she was justified by her own merits. Hence, she hears the sentence: And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you … go away, and do not sin anymore.”
St John Paul II provides us a perfect conclusion to this story: “This Gospel passage clearly teaches that Christian forgiveness is not synonymous with mere tolerance, but implies something more demanding. It does not mean overlooking evil, or even worse, denying it. God does not forgive evil but the individual, and He teaches us to distinguish the evil act, which as such must be condemned, from the person who has committed it, to whom He offers the possibility of changing. While man tends to identify the sinner with his sin, closing every escape, the heavenly Father instead has sent His Son into the world to offer everyone a way to salvation… On Calvary, by the supreme sacrifice of his life, the Messiah will seal for every man and woman the infinite gift of God's pardon and mercy.”
Fourth Sunday of Lent Year C
The parable of the Prodigal Son needs no introduction. It is perhaps the most moving of the Lord’s parables. Its length helps with character development which you don’t see much in the other parables, and this is why the story is able to endear us to each of its three main characters. Although the common title of the parable seems to focus on the wayward younger son, who squanders his inheritance and finally makes his way back to his father when he has lost everything, hoping to get a second chance, the characters and sub-stories of both sons serve solely to reveal the heart of the father, the true protagonist of this parable.
If Christ often inserts Himself into most of His parables which involve people instead of objects, this is one of those rare parables where none of its characters seem to point to Him. The spotlight is on the father, a clear reference to the Heavenly Father. Nowhere else does the Lord portray the Father in heaven more vitally, more plainly.
The impressiveness of this parable is that the story begins with the fact that the father grants the son’s request and hands over to him, his portion of the inheritance without any question - no argument, no lecturing, no threat of cutting-off this son although the son’s action tantamount to him wishing his father dead. That’s when you get your inheritance - when your parents are dead. But this son can’t wait for his father’s natural death and demands that which does not belong to him while his father is still alive. We may find the younger son’s behaviour odious and disgusting but little do we realise that many of us suffer from a similar issue. Many of us have an enormous sense of entitlement, feeling that we deserve special treatment, or that we have the right to something. We fail to recognise that everything we possess, all the imaginable and unimaginable goods which we possess are actually unmerited gifts from God. We have no claim or right to them but yet God, in His loving mercy and generosity, grants it to us even though we are undeserving.
The older son is no better. He too thinks that he is entitled to something because of his hard work and loyalty. He forgets that true love is unmerited – love does not have a price tag to be bought nor can you earn it. Instead of recognising his father’s love and generosity and that everything the father possesses is already his, the elder son only has resentment in his heart, resentment born once again from a skewed sense of entitlement. Once again, the father shows mercy to the older boy as he did to the younger one. Both are undeserving of his love, and yet not a harsh word from the father for the both of them.
As I had pointed out earlier, the remarkable thing about this parable is that it says nothing about the role of Jesus. He is definitely not to be identified with either the elder son nor the younger boy. All of us can identify with either one of them or perhaps even both, at some time or another. The emphasis of the whole story is the father, who gives us a glimpse of how much our Heavenly Father loves us and seeks to reconcile sinners to Himself. But our Lord is present in a special way – He is present in the telling of the story - He is the Word that reports this reconciliation. He is the judgment which the father passes - the son who is lost is now found, the one who died is now alive again. Jesus is the Word through which God establishes His eternal reconciliation with the world.
This is what St Paul attempts to tell us in the second reading: “It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled.” The work of reconciliation is accomplished through Christ, and never apart from Him. Not by bypassing Him, but “through Christ” and “in Christ” does the Father reconcile us to Himself. For it is Christ who came to seek the lost until they are found, and it is Christ who died for us so that we may live. As St Paul beautifully explains: “For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.”
We’ve heard the parable of the Prodigal Son, and we have witnessed the astounding love of the father. But how do we make sense of this? There is one verse in the Sermon on the Plain that gives clarity to this parable: “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate” (Luke 6:36). In commenting on this verse, Pope Francis asserts that “Mercy is the very heart of God!” This is the heart of the father in the parable. He accepted both of his sons, though he did not agree with what they did. He loved them completely, showing understanding, acceptance, and most of all, a divine forgiveness. His heart was completely open.
God’s mercy always gives us a second chance to encounter His Son Jesus Christ and to believe in Him. No matter how skeptical or doubtful we may be; no matter how far we have strayed from the experience of communion with Christ, in and through His Church; and no matter how seriously we have sinned, Jesus always reaches out to us with open arms. He embraces us and invites us to experience His friendship and His forgiveness. Nothing we have ever done could keep us out of the heart of our loving and all-forgiving God. Just as how the father welcomes back the prodigal son, we see the action of our Lord Jesus mysteriously hidden within the action of the father. Our Lord Jesus is the embrace of the Heavenly Father for fallen humanity as He stretched out His hands on the cross; He is the Bridegroom who weds His bride by placing a gold ring upon her finger; He is the sandal on our feet that makes our journey light; He is the fatted calf, the Lamb of God, sacrificed for our redemption. Yes, our Lord Jesus Christ is present in this tale of forgiveness, mercy and love. He is, as Pope Francis tells us, the face of the Father’s mercy.
Third Sunday of Lent Year C
We all suffer from delusions of immortality, invincibility and impregnability, constantly assuring ourselves, “it will never happen to me!” Yes, we see our friends’ parents get divorced, we empathise with them but then we console ourselves, “Thank God, my parents are fine. What happened to his parents will not happen to mine.” We get news that the house down the road was burgled and count ourselves fortunate that we have been spared. We hear stories of our colleagues at work or at church getting tested positive for COVID-19 but then, I continue to cheat on all those annoying public health recommendations because nothing has happened to me. “It’s been two years and I’ve not gotten infected. Nothing to worry about. It will never happen to me.” And then there is death. We know we will die one day, just 'not now'. Many often think that if they don’t talk about it or think about it, they can live to see another day.
Our minds are generally not tuned to abstract risk assessment. We feel invincible, immune from tragedy, until tragedy hits too close to home and then all of sudden, our measure of risks changes, our value system takes on a radical overhaul, and we begin to see our priorities in a different light. But most of the time, tragedy doesn’t have a feel of urgency - it seems too distant, perhaps only appearing as headlines in our newspapers but hardly a tiny blip on my radar of cognisance.
Today, a group of people came to report to the Lord about a tragedy, not a natural one but a bloody slaughter by the Roman prefect, Pilate, and what makes this story more egregious is that the massacre took place while these Galileans were offering sacrifice at the Temple. For those who reported this news to our Lord, were perhaps hoping to elicit some response and statement from Him. This was news that hit close to home - the ones who died were their fellow countrymen, perhaps some were even people whom they knew - friends or relatives. They could never imagine anything like this happening to them, what more to these people who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices.
And our Lord did give them a response, but perhaps not the response they were expecting. When bad things happen, it is so easy to lay the blame on something or someone. So, our Lord cited once again the example of Pilate’s bloody murder but also added a natural tragedy in the form of the tower of Siloam collapsing and killing some people. It’s easy to find a culprit in the first instance, but how about the second? If no human person is to be faulted, would God be guilty of this second tragedy? Or perhaps, it would be easier to postulate that all the victims were actually guilty of sin and were therefore receiving their just punishment?
Instead of placing the blame on someone or something, the Lord immediately makes this a moment of calling His audience to a deeper introspection. The issue isn’t about the guilt of Pilate or those victims but rather, the response each of us makes when we witness tragedy and experience the fragility of human life. “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”
The words of our Lord serve as a “memento mori.” Roughly translated, the Latin phrase means “remember death.” The Church and our ancestors were most familiar with the wisdom of this advice since death was an everyday reality that marked every aspect of life and no one was spared, young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick. The call to remember death was surely easier for past generations to embrace than for us. They had visible reminders of death’s grip all around them, whereas many of us can avoid the subject for most of our lives if we choose to.
Yes, we live in a very different world today where life expectancy has risen and infant mortality has dropped, where deaths today occur in medical facilities cordoned off from where we live, and our undertakers have perfected the art of embalming to make the dead look so alive. And where the reality of death fades to the background of our consciousness, other joy-stealing problems are quick to rise up and fill the void. When death is pushed out of our thinking, it isn’t replaced by warmth and peace and happiness. It’s replaced by death’s many other faces. We fixate instead on the comparatively trivial symptoms of our deeper problem. We’re still anxious, still defensive, still insecure, still angry, still despairing. We may detach ourselves from death so we can spend our time and energy chasing happiness. But that detachment won’t change the fact of our mortality, and it won’t ultimately make us happier.
Therefore, the words of our Lord, “unless you repent you will all perish as they did,” still matters today, more than ever. We should remember our mortality, our fragility, our vulnerability and that all of us will die one day; we should remember for these reasons.
First, death puts things in perspective. Without an awareness of death, we may get caught up in pursuing and fearing the most trifling of things. But death changes all of that. What we often fret about will be nullified by death. At death, the only thing which matters is our salvation.
Secondly, death brings the power of God into focus. Recognising the relevance of death every day is how we recognise the relevance of God every day, too. When we are in control, when life seems peaceful and uneventful, most people would never see any need for God.
Thirdly, death can bring back sinners to the path of righteousness. The thief on the cross did it in the last minutes of his life, and our Lord assured him that he would be with Him in paradise. Meditating on death is a call to repentance.
On Ash Wednesday, as the congregation files up silently like in a death march, to receive blessed Ashes, the priest will sprinkle these on the head of the person while speaking one of several formulas, including this: “Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris;” “Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”
One day, we will die, just not now. And thus we confidently step in the plane or cross the street and for some of you, decide it’s time to return to Church after the long break of lockdowns and personal isolation during this pandemic. Watch left and right and hope there is no plane crashing into the place you are walking into or a COVID infected person coming close to you. A greater awareness of our vulnerability is positive, if it leaves cracks in our delusional bubble of impregnability. We come to realise that when we are afraid to look at death, we are a poorer people because of it. No matter how long science can prolong life, no matter how much embalming fluid is pumped into a corpse, nature will have her way. This is the hideous Truth. But for us Christians, we can rest in the knowledge that the ultimate Victor is Christ, Our Lord, who walked out of His tomb 2,000 years ago and offers resurrection to us. It is the same Christ who issues us with this warning everyday, reminding us: “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”
Second Sunday of Lent Year C
God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell: these used to be the common themes found in almost everything ranging from cartoons to fiction novels, artistic masterpieces to the Sunday pulpit, as if these two themes are ingrained in the fabric of society. Nearly every human being holds some sort of belief system regarding heaven, hell, or both – you either believe in it, are ambivalent to it or scoff at it. A scathing judgment came from Stephen Hawking who argued that a belief that heaven or an afterlife awaits us, is a "fairy story" for people afraid of death. Perhaps you can recall these words from John Lennon’s song “Imagine”: “Imagine there’s no heaven; it’s easy if you try. No hell below us–above us only sky.” The song argues that if you can imagine away these unpleasant realities, we could create utopia on earth.
So, what happened to heaven and hell? In generations past it seemed the message of salvation could not be preached without the poignant illustrations of the glory of heaven promised to those who remained faithful to Jesus Christ, their Lord and Saviour, whereas the lake of fire is reserved for those who refuse to accept Him. But heaven’s gotten a bad press lately. We don’t believe in it like we used to. We don’t think about it very much nowadays. We’re all too busy making a living to worry about what happens after we die. We live, interact, work, and fall in love without any second thought of whether we will eventually end up in heaven or hell. Both heaven and hell are now used as metaphors to describe our present state, rather than two states after our death. Someone once put it this way, ‘For the unbeliever, this life is the only heaven they will ever know. For the believer, this life is the only hell we will ever know.’ Belief in heaven has taken a plunge because we are caught up with a utopian dream of establishing an earthly paradise. Salvation is no longer the desired goal. It has been replaced by therapeutic earth-bound substitutes – inner peace, happiness in the present life, longevity, health, wealth, wholeness of being, and solutions to our problems.
Are the likes of Stephen Hawkings and John Lennons of this world right, in disbelieving that there is life after death? Is heaven a mere delusion of those who cannot face death or the horror of this present life? Or is the belief in heaven rooted in reality and if it is, what has it to do with our present lives? Our readings today seem to say so. They partly lift aside the veil that separates earth from heaven and in so doing, they reveal the glory of the world as God created it. In the first reading, the ancient Abram who had lost all hope of producing a progeny who will ensure the continuation of his name, is provided a glimpse of heaven. In the stars, he is shown the promise of God that his descendants would be beyond his present imagining. In the second reading Paul exhorts the community in Philippi to “not give way but remain faithful in the Lord,” by reminding them that their “homeland is in heaven” and that Christ will “transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body.”
Finally, we have in the Gospel, Luke’s account of the transfiguration. The transfiguration occurs in a context where the Lord had just revealed to His disciples that He would be put to death in Jerusalem. His prediction of His imminent death was met with denial and even anger. They were shaken by the thought that their Master, the awaited Messiah, would meet such a horrific fate. This is why the Lord took them up to the mountain where, "he was transfigured before them." This experience of the transfiguration was, therefore, God’s way of delivering the disciples from a crisis of faith by providing them with a glimpse into the glory of heaven. When we have sight of the finishing line, the rigours of the race become less demanding and we gain a second wind.
The cause of a crisis of faith often arises from the way in which we see people and things around us. Death, suffering, separation seem to be defining moments in our lives. The disciples needed a vision from God’s point of view, to see that in spite of the death sentence hanging over the head of Jesus, God was still with Him, God was still in control of events, God would see to it that in the end, He would be victorious over His foes, even over death. In the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John saw that there was more to Jesus than what they could see and hear and touch; they got a glimpse of the future glory of the Lord’s resurrection. His death would not be the end; it would only inaugurate the beginning of Eternal Life. It would open the gates of heaven.
An important truth shines forth from the centre of this mystery. Glimpses of this transfigured world are not only good for our mental health but are essential for our salvation. They help us see through the illusions cast by the devil who constantly tempts us with his greatest weapon, which is despair. We are tempted to store up treasures in this world and to place our hopes in projects which can only disappoint us. Our dreams of an earthly utopia, where we will be shielded from all pain, trouble, and disappointment is merely delusional. Christians disagree with Hawking’s conclusion – heaven is not “a fairy-tale”, it’s the Utopian ideal that proves to be real. Heaven makes the journey worth travelling. Heaven provides the strength to bear the weight of our tribulations. Heaven keeps us on course, away from the distractions that tie us to this earthly life and its lies. Heaven must exist, or our present suffering will lose its meaning. Heaven must exist, if we are to persevere and keep running till we reach the finishing line.
Unlike John Lennon or other Hollywood celebrities who need to “imagine” how our world would look like without heaven or hell, we Christians have no need for flighty imagination. We have the Eucharist, a glimpse and a taste of heaven. The Eucharist is real. Jesus, truly and substantially present in the Eucharist, is real. To see this requires faith, not imagination. As St John Paul II once wrote: “Today, the Eucharist which we are preparing to celebrate takes us in spirit to Mount Tabor together with the Apostles Peter, James and John, to admire in rapture the splendour of the transfigured Lord… We, pilgrims on earth, are granted to rejoice in the company of the transfigured Lord when we immerse ourselves in the things of above through prayer and the celebration of the divine mysteries. But, like the disciples, we too must descend from Tabor into daily life where human events challenge our faith. On the mountain we saw; on the paths of life we are asked tirelessly to proclaim the Gospel which illuminates the steps of believers.”
First Sunday of Lent Year C
“When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.” This maxim may be the single most quoted line from G.K. Chesterton’s prolific pen, that is, if he had actually written it. No one seems to be able to trace the original source of this quotation, but everyone seems to have no issues about its popular attribution to the great Catholic apologist and writer.
Today’s Gospel begs the question: if the Lord Himself could be subjected to temptations by the devil, what is the worst temptation that can challenge a faithful Christian? Is it lust or some other form of sexual temptation; money or power; insincerity or betrayal or self-righteousness? The answer may not be that obvious from a mere cursory reading of the gospel, but we need only to look back to the first temptation that was wrought by the devil in that pristine paradise known as Eden. Despite God having given Adam and Eve dominion over the whole of creation, a unique authority accorded only to man among all God’s creations, they were still susceptible to the lie of the devil, who tempted them with the authority of becoming “gods.” In other words, they attempted to usurp God’s power as their own. They wanted to be “like gods.”
The Great Temptation—the sin of Adam —is to rewrite the rules, tell God when He may and may not tell us what to do, and to live as our own god. As Pope Emeritus Benedict keenly notes in the first volume of his bestseller, Jesus of Nazareth, “At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives.”
This is the common thread running through all three temptations and all other temptations we face. It is basically this: to treat God as less than God. We are constantly being tested in our trust that God sustains us, protects us and, in fact, delivers us. We would rather trust in our own strength, devices and resources than to trust in God and His Providence. And ultimately, “when Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything;” material possessions, power, men’s approval and affections.
The three temptations narrated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (though in a slightly different sequence) are three manifestations of the same mother of all temptations – to be ‘like gods’. As opposed to doing the will of the Father, Satan tempts Jesus to follow his own path and way. The devil tries to make Jesus believe the fallacy that the end justifies the means. The first temptation seems harmless enough - to make bread. It was the temptation of too much self-reliance, the temptation that posits our belief that we are capable of manufacturing our own salvation through some socio-economic or political solution. The second temptation is the temptation of naked power, it is taking the short cut to salvation, minus the inconvenience of the cross, and thus cancelling the need for genuine conversion. And finally, the third temptation is the temptation for the spectacular and the sensational, seeking a sign, expecting God to do something special, telling Him to do it my way.
But here is how our Lord responded to the three temptations of the devil: to the temptation to satisfy our wants, He says focus on God and not the world. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and mind and soul. To the temptation of power, our Lord Jesus reminds us that God alone is the source of all abundance and power in our lives. We derive power not from autonomy but from faithful and humble obedience to God. And finally, to the temptation of seeking the approval of others, the Lord reminds us that it is far more important to please God, than it is to please and impress men. Ultimately, the ultimate defence and cure to all forms of temptations is this, putting God first above all else.
Today, this proposal to be like gods, to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, is still the mother of temptations. It is still the basic temptation in the world today, the temptation to reject God’s norms of right and wrong, norms implanted in human nature and in creation, the temptation to reject divine authority, either direct, or mediated through the magisterial church, and become like gods ourselves. Dissent is never an excuse that one has to think creatively. It is the product of hubris, the arrogance of man who thinks that he is smarter than God and the Church, which Christ had established to provide us with clear guidance and direction. Thus, to submit to the will of God, to be obedient to His voice and to listen to the tender counsel of Mother Church, is not stupidity as many would wish us to think. In fact, to resist the temptation to be gods, calls for the virtues of courage and humility.
Although Lent begins with this meditation on the temptations of Christ and invites us to contemplate our own proclivity to choose sin, we should not be contented to just remain here. A hurdler soon learns that if he starts looking at the hurdles, he is going to fall right on his face. He must fix his gaze on a point at the finish line, and the hurdles will seem to just pass by his eyesight almost unnoticed as he focuses intently on the goal. Well, that's the essence of Lent. The goal of Lent and our Lenten penitential practices, is not Lent. It is to prepare for the triumph of Christ over temptation, sin and death. Our gaze must be fixed on Easter because our Lord’s resurrection is irrefutable proof that sin and death will not have the last say. And so, as we allow ourselves to follow our Lord into the spiritual wilderness of these forty days, we are assured that despite the temptations to turn our backs on God and pretend to be like gods, we have the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide us back to acknowledge that there is only one God and that “you must worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone.”
