1st sunday of lent 2017 fr chagala meditation

From the Pastor's Desk: Thoughts for the First Sunday of Lent 2017 Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Today we begin a new journey of Lent 2017 that will help us to renew our hearts to follow Christ.

Sincere conversion is the goal of this time of grace. Lent is a forty-day time that the Church gives us as a sign of our ongoing process of conversion that in the Primitive Church used to serve as the time of preparation for baptism.

Baptism was not, in those times of the Early Church, a half hour event as today we have it in our parishes.

That is why we need to realize that what we received as babies in that half hour is meant to grow just as a small seed grows to the stature of a big and beautiful blossom tree. The water that irrigates this tree is the word of God. Today’s first reading in the book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew present to us a dialogue between Eve and the serpent and Jesus Christ and the devil, respectively. Each dialogue shows our concrete human reality of sin and temptation. Eve falls into sin (disobedience) because she listens--believes the lie of the serpent (“prohibition to eat any of the trees of the garden and that by eating of the tree of good and evil she would not die). Jesus does not engage into conversation with the devil in the desert, but he knows how to reject Satan's voice and seduction by his trust in God's words, his confidence to God’s plan of love even in Suffering, and his fidelity to worship God the Father alone and not the idols of the world.

I ask you, dear parishioner, and I include myself too: whom do we listen to: the serpent’s voice or God’s voice? Remember, temptations are necessary for our growth of love towards God. “With no temptation, no one can be saved,” St. Augustine used to say.

The weapons to fight temptation are: fasting, prayer, and alms giving. Courage! God Bless.

Fr. Arturo Chagala