A MESSAGE FOR THE FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT
Sometimes we have to make choices in
life. Often, these choices are easy
and we seem to just drift along on the
waves of circumstance, taking advantage of the slings and arrows of fortune
that gently push us in one direction or another. Of course, it is God and not “fortune” that actually
guides us, and the passive choices we make should be simply our way of trusting
in his divine Providence and responding appropriately. But then, other times, there are the
difficult decisions...
These harder choices with which life presents
us are often forced upon us. We find
ourselves in some difficulty or other, and we realize we must actively decide
to choose a different path. Even here,
though, divine Providence gives us external circumstances that compel us to
decide between one or more paths, at least one of which we have to tread.
The hardest choices of all are those where Providence
merely gives us an internal nudge, a grace that suggests to us that we should
change the path we are on. For each of
us, that choice has to be made at some point during our lives. There is no external force pushing us one way
or another, there is nothing beyond the silent whispers of the Holy Spirit,
inspiring in us the desire to change our ways.
Are we going to listen to these promptings of
grace? Are we even going to hear
them? Lent gives us this annual
opportunity to face this most important of life’s choices, whereby we opt to
live our life either according to what we
want to do, or according to what God
wants us to do. Today, our Gospel
describes the temptations of Christ in the wilderness. Three enticements the Devil gives him, and
three times our Lord makes the choice to follow his Father’s will. Here is our example, and as we follow our
blessed Savior into the desert to fast for forty days and forty nights, so too
we must follow him in his temptations, freely choosing, out of our love for God,
the path of righteousness and holiness.
The hustle and bustle of daily life
often renders inaudible God’s call to grace.
And so the Church today shouts Stop!
Listen! “Behold, now is the
accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Before us lie two paths and we must choose
between them now, today. “For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go
in thereat. But strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
God awaits your decision so that he may write your name in the Book of Life. Pray that he may make you the instrument of
his grace, pray that you might have the courage to decide today.
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