1st Sunday of Lent Year C

Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Romans 10:8-13
Luke 4:1-13

Why should we and how can we constantly encounter Jesus?

We have entered the season of Lent. Lent is a time God invites us to reconnect with Him, to come back to Him, to encounter Him once again. This presupposes that we have departed from God in some ways. And indeed, if we are truly honest with ourselves, most of us have done so. So, the question is: Why have we departed from Him? This is an important question. This is because, in seeking the answer to this question, we would also likely discover the reason for returning to Him. How so?

The truth is, whether we are born into a Christian family or are a convert, God has touched our lives in some ways in the past. There are many ways this can happen. Firstly, this can come in the form of blessings. Perhaps, He has blessed us with a good family, a good upbringing, good education, good friends, financial stability, good health, or a combination of the above. Or perhaps, He has guided and protected us at important moments of our lives – when we are making important decisions; in giving us opportunities to excel; or in saving us from certain disasters. For some of us, we may even have had a special encounter with Him, such as a miracle, a vision or a revelation. Whatever it is, it is safe to say, our encounters are different as we are individuals. But the common thread of these encounters is, at some point of our lives, God has been real to us.

However, in spite of our Godly encounters, many of us have become lukewarm in our faith. Many of us have become more distant to God, as our Godly encounters fade into memories. But we should not be surprised this has happened. For it is precisely the devil’s intent that we distant ourselves from God. The devil does so by presenting temptation before us; and through our succumbing to the temptations, plant seeds of doubt into our mind. As the doubt grows, we become more and more distant from God. This is the devil’s modus operandi.

In the Gospel this week, we read about how the devil tempted Jesus. Firstly, he appealed to Jesus’ with a temptation of the flesh. In the Gospel, the devil uses Jesus’ hunger (verse 3) to tempt Him. In the same way, the devil often tempts us by appealing to our attachment to food, money, sex or vanity. These often draws us away from our family, loved ones and our church community, leading us to only think for ourselves. Secondly, the devil appealed to Jesus with a temptation of the eyes. In this Gospel, the devil tempted Jesus with the promise of riches and possessions (verse 5-8). In the same way, the devil often lures us with the glitters of life, appealing us with materialism, greed, and envy. Thirdly, the devil appealed to Jesus with a temptation of the heart, by suggesting that He abused His power by bringing attention, power and glory upon Himself, rather than glorifying His heavenly Father (verse 9-12). In the same way too, the devil often tempts us with power, fame and authority. He appeals to our pride with our need to be praised, to be acknowledged and to be recognised. The devil often uses our pride to lead us away from God; or to cause us to engage in scheming and plotting against others that ultimately also destroys ourselves.

In the face of such constant undermining by the devil, how can we stand firm? By our human strength, we cannot. We need to draw strength from Him. How do we do that? We do so by always connecting our hearts to God’s, through to our past encounters with Him. In other words, we relive our encounters with God. Each time to relive an encounter, it is in fact a fresh encounter with God. As we remember where we came from and how God has showered His blessings and grace upon us; we are experiencing Him anew. Even through the event is the same, each other we contemplate and relive it, we are drawn into a deeper encounter with Him. Conversely, failure to do relive our encounters will lead us more and more distant to Him. This is the mistakes of many Christians – we forgot God’s blessings; we took Him for granted; and we become apathetic. As a result, our faith become mundane and routine; some of us even allow ourselves to be de-evangelised by the devil and the secular world. We lose our faith altogether.

It is precisely for this reason for the prayers we read in the First Reading. After many years of wondering in the desert, the Israelites finally took possession of the Holy Land. Under the leadership of the priest, the First Reading is the people’s thanksgiving prayer. The people recalled their humble beginning in the person of Abraham. They recall how God had guided and protected them through the years: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” (verse 5-9) By reliving God’s blessing of past generations, God became real again to them. This is the spirit of anamnesis – the act of bringing ourselves into the presence of a past event. In fact, anamnesis should not be a foreign concept to us Catholics. It is what we do each time we celebrate the Eucharist. We are reencountering Jesus by bringing the event of the Lord’s Supper into the presence.

But for these encounters to be real and empowering, they must come from the heart. It is as St Paul promised the Romans in the Second Reading: “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.'” (verse 9-11) Indeed, what we profess with our mouth must come from our heart. In this way, we are being transformed each day, to be closer in image and likeness to God.

Let us adopt this as our Lenten mantra this year. Amen.