Merredin Catholic Parish

GENESIS 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7
PSALM 50: 3-6, 12-14, 17
ROMANS 5: 12-19
MATTHEW 4: 1-11

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The key to our understanding of Lent is found in our opening prayer: ‘That this Lent will help us reproduce in our lives the self-sacrificing love of Christ.’

Today, it seems that we could be losing sight of the values of our Lenten practices of fasting and penance, prayer and charity. This, I feel is the result of the ‘Me’ and ‘I’ culture.

Today too, ‘Sin’ is one thing people do not like to speak or hear about for it seems negative. Yet the reality is that we cannot escape from sin. Each of us have sinned and all of us are affected by sin, our own and that of others.

Lent is a time when we prepare for the celebration of Easter. It is a time then to help us to focus on why Jesus came: to save us from our sins. It is a time too to help us open us to his saving grace.

Lent a gift to us, not a burden.
Lent is a time for renewal;
a time to see where we stand before God;
a time to look at our relationship with others;
a time to deepen our love for God and neighbour.
Fasting and penance, prayer and charity are ways in which we enter into a spirit of renewal.

Lent recalls the forty days Jesus spent in the desert. Jesus prepares for his mission to bring the Good News to the people by going into the desert to fast, pray, and reflect. At the end of this, he is tempted, just as in the story of Adam and Eve and just as the Israelites were tempted in the desert during the journey to the Promised Land. The temptations might be seen as examples of how we are tempted.

The humanness of Jesus is revealed in his struggle with evil. He had to struggle against evil in every way that we too have to struggle, but he did not succumb. The devil’s temptation is subtle. After all what is wrong with having bread in the face of hunger or to show God’s power or to have wealth so that we can do good?
Our first reading gives us a different story of the human struggle with evil. It tells us that from its beginning the human race has turned away from God, its Creator. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin. Jesus obeyed to God and he brings salvation.

In Adam’s sin, we see that all sin has its roots in ‘ME’ and ‘I’ mentality.

The human struggle against evil continues in our lives. Whilst the root of all sin is Me, the source of redemption is Jesus. Lent is a time for us to choose the redemption offered by Jesus not the temptation offered by the serpent.

Fasting helps us to be open to God and to realise our total dependence on God.

Prayer helps us to grow in trust of God, and to recognise the message of the cross.

Charity helps us to be open to the needs of others and to grow in our love for neighbour and so doing to know God’s love for us.

The Sacrament of Penance is a vital aspect of our preparation for Easter. Lent is a time to recognise our own sinfulness, that we may confess them, and seek God’s mercy, grace and love. Easter can only be a celebration for those who know their need of God.

Fasting, prayer, charity and reconciliation are the ways in which during this Lent, we reproduce in our lives the self-sacrificing love of Christ.’

ECCLESIASTICUS 15: 15-20
PSALM 118: 1-2, 4-5, 17-18, 33-34 R. v. 1
1 CORINTHIANS 2: 6-10
MATTHEW 5: 17-37

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Imagine someone coming to ask you for help. How ready will you be in helping him or her? I think our readiness will depend who is asking for help. And if we do help, the level we will be ready to help will also depend on who is asking. If the person is a beggar or someone we dislike, would we find an excuse not to help? Would we help an acquaintance the same was as we would a close friend? What would we do if it was someone we loved?

The reason for the different responses is simply one of relationship: love. Where there is love, there will always be a greater respond to help the other, to care for the other, to seek the good of the other.

For the people of Israel, the Law God gave them through Moses is central to their relationship with God. It was central to the covenant God made with them. Keeping the Law was being faithful to the covenant. It defined their relationship with God and the community.

The shortfall of all written laws though is that it does not necessarily build relationships. What is missing is that people can follow the Law but not seek the love of God. Just following the law has no heart in it. Jesus saw this in many of the Pharisees and Sadducees…

And so in today’s Gospel, Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the Law but to emphasize the depth of the meaning of God’s law which is God’s love to see others as God sees them. For God’s law is there to give life that builds relationship. This is what it means to be salt of the earth and light to the world which Jesus calls us to be in last week’s Gospel reading.

Jesus then goes on to show in two commandments what it means to love in following God’s law. The challenge for all of us is that sometimes we let our emotions control our actions.

One way of reflecting on our faithfulness to God in following His law of love is to ask ourselves, “How have we been life giving to others?” It is a question of whether we are self-centered filled with self-pity or are we concern about the welfare of our neighbour.
The more we are self-centered, the more we let our emotions control us.

The same question can be asked of our relationship with God. Where is our love for God in our religious practices?

It is God who eventually reveals what love is all about. The cross is the great image of the love of God who gave up everything out of love for us even for those who crucified him that we may have eternal life.

ISAIAH 58: 7-10
PSALM 111: 4-9 R. v. 4
1 CORINTHIANS 2: 1-5
MATTHEW 5: 13-16

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Last week in the Beatitudes, Jesus presented to his disciples the essence of who the Christian is. And this is what Jesus calls us to be because today he tells us that we are to be salt of the earth and light of the world.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus begins his teaching ministry with the Beatitudes. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus ends his teaching with the last Judgment where he praise those who visit the sick and those in prison, who feeds the hungry and cloth the naked. They are the real Christians.

Faith is only real when we live out the teachings of God’s love. And so straight after the Beatitudes, Jesus calls his disciples to be salt of the earth and light of the world.

What do we seek as Christians? Do we seek great preachers and great spiritual experiences in prayer and worship? These are good for they can inspire us, strengthen and affirm our faith. But the greatest Christian experience is to live out the love Gods calls us to through the Holy Spirit.

Who for instance, who would we consider is the greatest of preachers and teachers? Jesus himself of course? Yet when we see the teaching he gave did little good for his disciples: they competed with each other for honour, they wanted to burn down the Samaritan town, they did not understand, and they were afraid.

But they changed…..they changed after Jesus’ Ascension, after their teacher had left them, after they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and led by that same Spirit they changed after they went out there and became a light through their own lives and sharing of their stories. The growing of our faith does not only take place only when someone teaches us but more so when we live out our faith and when we share our own stories.

There is a time in all our lives to be taught, strengthened and affirmed. But we cannot be children all the time. There comes a time when we must begin to live out what we have been taught.

The greatest of homilies might inspire us, but it cannot be compared to the smallest of sacrifices we make for love of God in our lives.

How is gentleness and compassion of God revealed through us? Where is the peace maker, the one who hungers for justice, the comforter of those who mourn reflected in my life?

Discipleship goes beyond a personal relationship with God but being a presence of God’s word and love, a light in the world. A person who knows the love of God will want to tell the world about it and share it with others.

A time comes when the teaching needs to become the experience that the disciple may become the teacher, through his or her witness.

Everybody seeks happiness in life. But not everybody seeks happiness in the same way.

Some feel that they will find happiness through wealth or power or fame or pleasure.

The truth is that happiness is only found by becoming who we were meant to be by living out the human nature that God created us to be. This is the Gospel message of Jesus today.

Last week we heard Jesus proclaiming that the kingdom of God is close at hand, he calls his first followers and heals the sick. Today Jesus begins his teaching ministry. 

Matthew’s Gospel is always comparing Jesus with Moses. Like Moses, when Jesus was born, children were killed. Like Moses, Jesus comes from Egypt. Like Moses, Jesus goes up to the mountain now to bring God’s law. But Jesus now comes to perfect that law in us that God gave through Moses.

And so today, Jesus gives us a new way of being with God, a new relationship with God.

Jesus presents us with the key to peace and happiness in our lives in the well-known ‘Sermon on the Mount’.

The Beatitudes forms the essence of Christian discipleship. It is a new way of living and loving. It is the way to holiness and wholeness, of being a total human person created in the image of God. The Beatitudes are in fact a contradiction with the worldly attitude of what success and happiness is.

Here, Jesus teaches us that it is by having a right relationship with God, others and self that we will find peace and happiness, now and in the future.

The poor in spirit are those who recognise our need of God and the gift of God in others.

The gentle are those who always put others before self.

Those who mourn are those who suffer because out of love they feel in their heart the suffering of others.

Those who hunger and thirst for what is right seeks right relationship with God and others.

Mercy is the fruit of love that seeks to heal and to reconcile.

The pure in heart are those who can see the goodness in others and respect their dignity.

The peacemakers are those who are at peace with self and others because they know that God is with them.

Those who seek justice, seek God’s kingdom because in God’s Kingdom is perfect justice and peace.

There are many roads we can take in search of happiness. Many of them like power, wealth, fame and pleasure end up in dead ends, and they are covered with human wreckage, the injuries we inflict on others. We will feel empty at the end of the day.

And it is also not what we do that brings happiness no matter how good that can seem to be. For instance we can give to charity and yet not be happy if we give grudgingly or reluctantly.

The Beatitudes reveal that happiness is found in WHO WE ARE when seen in us the living Grace of God. For then we become truly human created in the image of God, we are One with God.