Lent I

The First Sunday of Lent

2021 – Cycle B – Genesis 9:8-15; Psalm 25; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

We celebrate Christian feasts differently then we used to. A long fast led up to a feast which included fasting from weddings, parties, dancing, generally less of everything.  This period gave way spilling over into days and even weeks of joyous celebration. Today, we celebrate for weeks prior to a feast and then complain of our exhaustion. The way we mark the Feast of Christmas exemplifies this.

For nearly two months prior to the Christmas we begin to decorate, shop and celebrate, the cards go out, the lights go up and we are engulfed in Christmas music and movies at every turn.  The first day of Christmas arrives and we are…what? Over-saturated and tired as we complain about how much weight we’ve gained and are ready to move on. We feast and then fast.

Why the reversal in the fast–feast cycle?

Face it, renunciation, longing and fasting are not characteristics of our contemporary culture. How many Christian lives reflect the values of our culture rather than the Gospel? We’ve been well-trained and desire, in fact, believe we have a right, to instant gratification. Life is not lived unless we have experienced it all. Even before Amazon trained us, computer on, credit card number saved and Prime delivering our item tomorrow[!], we had given up on fasting and anticipation. Now there are generations of people in our culture that have experienced nothing else but instant gratification as a way of life.

Remember how we used to look forward to fruits and vegetables available only at certain times of the year. Now you can obtain any vegetable or fruit all year long. There is nothing to look forward to anymore.

Remember the ethnic foods that were only made to celebrate the feasts of Easter or Christmas; Saint Joseph’s Day or Lent. Who even recalls hot cross buns anymore? These foods marked days and seasons and were available at no other time of the year.

Generations now of Christian couples engage in sexual activity with little to no relationship. They live together and expect all the prerogatives of marriage without the lifetime commitment that we understand Christian Marriage to be. Reversed is the order of growing and deepening into a relationship that leads to a commitment and joyful expression. Why the reversal?

Why during this pandemic have many people of faith argued First Amendment Rights in regard to not being allowed to gather for worship? Despite the obvious health issues and the care we should have for each other, has no one considered that this imposed fasting from Eucharist and the reception of Holy Communion for many is a blessing from God? A blessing, you ask? How can denial be a blessing? Might there be a deep spiritual reason or invitation from God in this Eucharistic fast?

We even joke about eating dessert first, lest we die before we get to it.

Our culture teaches us that nothing should be forbidden to us. God teaches us otherwise.

“You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except…” Except? Right there in the garden, in the beginning, that one word introduces the concept of renunciation and fasting. And fasting and renunciation for a greater good. The greater good is life. For “the moment you eat from [the tree of Good and Evil] you shall die.” [See Genesis 2:16-17]  The Christian commitment is about life and death.

Renunciation, anticipation, fasting are pathways to life – eternal life. Our culture cannot bear anticipation or renunciation because it is not concerned about eternal life, nor should we expect it to be. Reflect on the last phrases that we will proclaim in the Creed; “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.” We confess not just our belief in eternal life but that we are anticipating it, looking forward to it, waiting for it to come. Amazon will not deliver it tomorrow at our doorstep. As Jesus taught us there is a pathway to eternal life and that it is narrow and unfortunately few walk upon it. [See Matthew 7:13-14]

For life to be fulfilling it must embrace the dynamic interplay between anticipation and fulfillment, longing and happiness, fasting and feasting. For presence depends upon absence, intimacy depends upon solitude, play upon work, feasting upon fasting, and joy upon renunciation. Consider which of those values the pandemic has starkly introduced into our lives? Absence. Solitude. Self-denial. Renunciation.

A blessing? How can denial be a blessing?

In the world of paradox, the world of contradictions, absurdity and mystery that is Christian spirituality, to fast is to feast, for “a person does not leave on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” [Matthew4:4] Do we perceive God’s Word as food? And like all food is meant to sustain us. The Word of God is the ordinary food of the Christian. As Christians, do we daily partake of the Word of God? Do we anticipate in each day what God will say to us in sacred scripture? Do we long to read, listen and meditate? What else is there to sustain us so as to have the strength for the works of mercy and justice?

In Lent, we are invited to fast from food, gathering and eating so as to feast on the Word of God. Word is bread. It fed Moses for forty days on Sinai when he received the Law. He forgot earthly food because he fed upon every word of the Spirit. Surrounded by evil, wild beasts and angels, what did Jesus feed on in his forty days in the desert? What was his source of strength – so as to hunger for our salvation?*

God continues to gives us this bread of Word that we might hunger for Christ Jesus.* A paradox. We feast on Word to hunger for Jesus. In turn Jesus has taught us to “work forfood that will not perish but endures for eternal life” [John 6:27].

So what is your endgame for Lent, beyond Lent for Christian living? How you and I live the fast–feast cycle makes a difference – in experiencing joy, strengthening our Baptismal call to live out mercy and justice, and encountering Jesus Christ.

Quotes and ideas are taken from Ronald Rolheiser, “The Value of Fasting and Feast” from Forgotten Among the Lilies, 2005.

*We Give You Thanks and Praise: The Ambrosian Eucharistic Prefaces translated by Alan Griffiths, Sheed & Ward 1999. See the Ambrosian Preface for the First Sunday of Lent and Monday of the first week of Lent.

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PLEASE NOTE: Homilies presented here are also being videotaped and put up on the Saint Mary, Oneonta website: http://www.SMCCOneonta.org.