The Season of Lent
About
The name for this season of the Church’s year originally meant ‘spring’, deriving from the German root for ‘long’:
Lent is the time of the year when the days become noticeably longer.
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Lent lasts for forty days, which is a significant period in Scripture.
This is the length of the flood in Genesis and of Moses’s fast before he was given the Ten Commandments.
More importantly, it is also the length of Jesus’s stay in the desert before beginning his active ministry.
Lent is a time of awakening; an opportunity to ‘start again’; a chance for renewal and re-commitment.
Above all, it is a call to love in the way that Jesus loved the Father and each of us: continually, and through self-giving.
It is good to remember that Lent is a ‘sober’ but not a ‘sombre’ time.
Indeed, Lent can be a time of gladness when we focus on drawing nearer to God.
Traditional Lenten practices can assist us with this, and our Works of Love can take many forms.
Prayer, repentance and forgiveness, sometimes through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, lie at the heart of our faith.
Fasting can help us develop internal freedom.
Almsgiving may prompt us not just to give money, but also time, support and friendship –
and perhaps a listening ear to someone who needs it.
All of these are well-tried ways in which we can co-operate with God.
The season of Lent is also a special time to let God come close to us and let his Holy Spirit work within us:
• To help us examine the way in which we love;
• To touch our minds and hearts, and so help us live according to the values of Jesus himself;
• To reflect on Jesus’s boundless love for us, shown particularly in his Passion, Death and Resurrection;
• To strengthen our resolve to change our focus, putting the interests of others rather than our own self first.
To aid our reflections this Lent we are reproducing, with permission content from St Bueno's outreach.
If you would like to know more about them or access their guided prayer resources, 'prego', you can contact them via their website
The First Temptation
This temptation for food (like the two temptations that follow) does not entice Jesus to do evil things. All three temptations rather encourage him to do good things, but for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time. ‘If you are the Son of God …’ A better translation might be ‘since you are ...’, since Jesus’s divinity is not really questioned. Jesus’s answer here is rooted in Scripture: he quotes from Deuteronomy (8: 3; 6: 16; & 6: 13), a favourite Old Testament book of the Early Church. Jesus is not denying the importance of food, but stresses that there is another dimension to life.
Stones into bread
The Fountain thirsts, the Bread is hungry here
The Light is dark, the Word without a voice.
When darkness speaks it seems so light and clear.
Now he must dare, with us, to make a choice.
In a distended belly’s cruel curve
He feels the famine of the ones who lose,
He starves for those whom we have forced to starve,
He chooses now for those who cannot choose
.He is the staff and sustenance of life,
He lives for all from one Sustaining Word,
His love still breaks and pierces like a knife
The stony ground of hearts that never shared,
God gives through Him what Satan never could;
The broken bread that is our only food.
Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons:
Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year (2012)
malcolmguite.wordpress.com
The Second Temptation
The scene is now in Jerusalem, the Holy City, where Satan invites Jesus to give a convincing sign of his miraculous powers. (The ‘Temple’ itself is not identified; it could be Herod’s temple overlooking the deep Kedron valley.)
This time the devil himself uses scripture, quoting Psalm 90 (91): 11–12. The reply Jesus gives: ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’ foreshadows the episode where the Pharisees and the Sadducees will test Jesus by asking him to show them a sign (Matthew 16: 1–4).
All the kingdoms of the world
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‘So here’s the deal and this is what you get:
The penthouse suite with world-commanding views,
The banker’s bonus and the private jet,
Control and ownership of all the news,
An ‘in’ to that exclusive one percent,
Who know the score, who really run the show,
With interest on every penny lent
And sweeteners for cronies in the know.
A straight arrangement between me and you,
No hell below or heaven high above,
You just admit it, and give me my due
And wake up from this foolish dream of love…
’But Jesus laughed, ‘You are not what you seem.
Love is the waking life, you are the dream.’
Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasonsmalcolmguite.wordpress.com
The Third Temptation
No mountain exists which allows one to see all the kingdoms of the world. This could be a reference to Moses standing at the top of Mount Nebo (Deut. 34: 1–3).
Matthew had an ecclesial purpose in the telling of these temptations. He sought to explain to the first-century Church the kind of Messiah Jesus was.
By implication, he also showed the kind of society the Church should be, and how it should overcome its own temptations.
On the Pinnacle
‘Temples and spires are good for looking down from;
You stand above the world on holy heights,
Here on the pinnacle, above the maelstrom,
Among the few, the true, unearthly lights.
Here you can breathe the thin air of perfection
And feel your kinship with the lonely star,
Above the shadow and the pale reflection,
Here you can know for certain who you are.
The world is stalled below, but you could move it
If they could know you as you are up here,
Of course they’ll doubt, but here’s your chance to prove it
Angels will bear you up, so have no fear….’
‘I was not sent to look down from above,
It’s fear that sets these tests and proofs, not love.’
Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons
malcolmguite.wordpress.com