Lent 2024

Dear Parishioners,

We have begun the time of Lent with Ash Wednesday this week.  Hopefully we were able to attend an Ash Wednesday service and receive the ashes signed on our foreheads with the invitation for us to “Repent and believe in the Gospel”.  It begins this time of reflection and repentance as we wait and prepare for the Passion of Christ and His ultimate act of salvation because of this passionate love for each of us.

The Gospel this Sunday tells us that it was the Spirit itself that led Jesus into the desert.  And so we too must trust that this time of Lent for repentance and preparation is led by the Holy Spirit.  The desert can be a place of loneliness or vulnerability, a place of dryness, a place of testing where we experience a lack of many things, it can be a spiritual dryness in prayer and it is often a place of temptation (similar to what Jesus experienced) to loose hope and loose faith and abandon God.  Depending on how we choose to live, it can also be a place where other distractions are removed so that we can listen more attentively to the voice of God.

It may seem difficult to comprehend at times that it is the Holy Spirit itself that leads us to these challenging experiences, but they are usually necessary for our spiritual growth.  These experiences can help us grow deeper in our relationship, friendship and understanding of God.   Just like Jesus embraced His own temptations in the desert, we too must embrace the challenges this Lent offers us with courage and faith.

We see this in the faithfulness and trust that Noah had in the Old testament too.  We hear about how he was led by God to pass through the waters of purification through the flood.  This eventually led him to a deeper relationship and covenant with God.  Noah was a good man, Jesus was the Son of God yet, both needed to pass through these moments.  So, it is important to not fall into the trap of thinking that the desert experiences in life are a punishment.  They can be challenging, they can make us question, they can make us feel disconnected from God but it is a time of renewal as we continue to hold fast to the belief that even if it may appear that way we are never alone in the struggle.

Have a blessed Lent, Ann Marie, FMVD