1st Sunday of Lent

In Odette Churchill’s book based on her experience of the concentration camp at Ravensbrook reflects on how the presence of evil so present in war can infect those people who survive the war. She likens it to a parasite which can infest the person who seeks to destroy its host. It transfers from one to the other.

These sobering words always remain with me when I reflect on my own life. It is easy to see how the evil of another can lead you to respond to the person in kind. Evil can breed evil. Often when we confront this reality in our own hearts it can deeply disturb us. First, that we have discovered these tendencies inside ourselves but also to how we seek to resolve them.

This is at the heart of what we discover in the Gospel today.

                Two things are present:

                                The wild beasts that threaten to tear us apart

                                The angels sent to tend us.

We need to recognize the two realities which Jesus talks about when he goes into Galilee preaching repentance and believe in the Gospel.

It recognizes that unresolved sin can tear us and our community apart but also he recognizes this is not undertaking simply by a solitary gritting of teeth and facing the problem ourselves. It is an opening of our hearts and minds to a God who reconciles and forgives.

We know only too well when we face these temptations. It is almost like a beast seeks to devour us and have us for supper. It can consume all our thinking and actions. It can drive us in directions where our lives seem out of control.

These is one of the reasons why the three disciplines of prayer, fasting and alms giving our so valuable. It allows us time to spend with God to get our hearts and minds straight. It allows us to acknowledge the desires or appetites that can consume us and lastly it allows us to see how our lives can be open to the needs of others.

By this threefold discipline we can bring ourselves before God in reconciliation both acknowledging the difficulties we live with and also seeking healing. The two go together to help us live Christian lives for our own good and the good of our community.