The God who Abides: The First Sunday of Lent 2025

                                                      The God who Abides:

The First Sunday of Lent 2025 

March 9, 2025

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Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

 

We begin another season of Lent, and we enter it as a time for metanoia, a change of heart. We want to be closer to Jesus as he goes through his days until his Passion. Obviously, we focus upon the thought and actions of Jesus, and today, I would like to reflect upon what God the Father, the Parent, is doing during this time as well because God is always present in God’s absence, and sometimes God is silent. We begin with the First Reading that shows us that Moses is speaking for God. Though God seems silent, God is aware of the way humans treat one another. 

 

Moses tells us that we are to be sympathetic to wanderers and migrants because their and our ancestors were mistreated aliens. One who has been wounded and has suffered is better able to respond compassionately to the suffering of others. God, as Father-Parent to this people, heard the cries of the people and was aware of their suffering and pain. God was not deaf to the cries back then, as God is not deaf to today’s cries of the poor. God will work to change human hearts in order to liberate those who toil in misery.

 

Was God present to Jesus when he suffered temptations in the desert? Jesus, in his weakened state, was vulnerable to quickly end his suffering, and yet he trusted in the presence of the absent God. Jesus demonstrated his trust and established the basis for a profoundly solid relationship. This allowed Jesus to know God would abide by him throughout his ministry to the very end. Jesus knew that a fundamental characteristic of God is God’s abiding fidelity. God will remain by his side, even though God may seem hidden and silent.

 

Watch this Lent how God relates to Jesus. How do we imagine God to be? Many want a God of majesty, when in fact, we have a God of weakness. We have a God who has a special place in God’s heart for those who are the least, the weakest, and the most vulnerable. Our God is a wounded God because God’s heart is wounded each time we hurt another person. We cannot say that we truly love God unless we can take seriously our neighbor’s pain. Our sensitivity to the suffering of others must increase because wounds do not heal unless we see and acknowledge them. We know that God abides when whenever we touch the wounds of another person. Then we realize God is alive and concerned. God is a sympathetic God, who feels with us, who suffers with us. 

 

During Lent, we will hear about the pain carried by many people, and we will experience how Jesus is derided, degraded, rejected, betrayed, and turned over entirely into the hands of his enemies. Through it all, God seems to remain silent. We will see how Jesus shows solidarity with those who are regarded as small and insignificant, the uninvited and the wounded. He identifies with them and becomes them, so much so that “what you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me?” Jesus is with them. In fact, he is them. He stands by them and abides by them, and he reveals to us that he is doing what God does – abides. We know the rest of the story, and there are times in our lives that God seems to be silent. We need to hear this story over and over again so that we do not become indifferent, that we may continue to change our hearts when it is so easy to look away. We cannot be deaf or blind to God’s hidden presence among us. We can hear them in the screams, in the cries, of the poor, the needy, the wounded. God happens when we attend to their needs. God is always there. 

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

Monday: (Leviticus 19) The Lord gives Moses ten commandments that he inscribes on stone tablets. 

 

Tuesday: (Isaiah 55) God’s word will issue forth from his mouth and shall not return until it has fulfilled his will.

 

Wednesday: (Jonah 3) Jonah set out to Nineveh asking them to proclaim a fast and then repent. The king does repent and the Lord dropped his threat because they turned from evil.

 

Thursday: (Esther 3) Queen Esther appeals to God for help in converting the king’s heart for hatred of the enemy that threatens them.

Friday: (Ezekiel 18) If the wicked turns from sinfulness and keeps the Lord’s statutes, he will surely live. Likewise, if a virtuous man becomes wicked, he shall die. 

 

Saturday: (Deuteronomy 26) Moses tells the people to observe the Lord’s statutes and decrees with their whole heart and soul. The Lord will stand by you. 

 

Gospel: 

Monday: (Matthew 25) Jesus tells his disciples about the last judgment when the goats and sheep will be separated. The measuring stick is the mercy shown to the most vulnerable.

 

Tuesday: (Matthew 6) The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. He tells them not to pray like the pagans, who seek honor and glory, and then gives them the Lord’s prayer. 

 

Wednesday: (Luke 11) Jesus chastises the crowd that seeks a sign, but none will be given to them. Because of Jonah’s preaching, the king and people repented.

 

Thursday: (Matthew 7) Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. The Father is generous, especially to those who love him.

 

Friday: (Matthew 5) Your righteousness must surpass the levels of the scribes and Pharisees in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Show righteousness by quickly settling disputes. 

 

Saturday: (Matthew 5) Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Heavenly Father. Be perfect as the Father is perfect.

 

Saints of the Week

 

March 9: Frances of Rome (1384-1440), was born into a wealthy Roman family and was married at age 13. She bore six children and when two died in infancy, she worked to bring the needs of the less fortunate to others. She took food to the poor, visited the sick, cared for the needy in their homes. When other women joined in her mission, they became Benedictine oblates. She founded a monastery for them after her husband's death. 

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• March 9, 1764. In France, all Jesuits who refused to abjure the Society were ordered by Parliament to leave the realm within a month. Out of 4,000 members only five priests, two scholastics, and eight brothers took the required oath; the others were driven into exile. 
• March 10, 1615. The martyrdom in Glasgow, Scotland, of St John Ogilvie. 
• Mar 11, 1848. In Naples, Italy, during the 1848 revolution, 114 Jesuits, after much suffering, were put into carts and driven ignominiously out of the city and the kingdom. 
• March 12, 1622. Pope Gregory XV canonized Sts Ignatius, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Philip Neri. 
• March 13, 1568. John Segura and five companions set sail from Spain for Florida, a fertile field of martyrs. (Nine Jesuits were killed there between 1566 and 1571.) 
• March 14, 1535. Ignatius received his degree from the University of Paris. 
• March 15, 1632. The death of Diego Ruiz, a great theologian, who studied on his knees.