Thanks for being here to worship on this first Sunday in Lent.  You’ll notice a couple of things different for Lent, some you may have already noticed. For the Penitential Act, we will recite the Confiteor, the “I Confess” prayer, followed by the Kyrie.  There is no Gloria during Lent, and no A-word before the Gospel.  

 

Then there are a couple of changes coming up in the liturgy, so right after the Homily, rather than recite the Nicene Creed like usual, we will recite the Apostles Creed, now through the end of the Easter season.  

 

(Not 6:30am) That is a subtle difference, but one more noticeable difference is that we will sing or chant the Lord’s Prayer.  Chant is “sung speech” and it is the way people have been praying for thousands of years, especially in groups like this.  The music for that is in the Breaking Bread, page 13, but my sense is you will remember it, or at least catch on quickly.

 

Lent is a sacred time which we signify with some annual changes. It’s a holy and acceptable time to prepare for the holiest days of the year, the Lord’s Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.  It’s like the beginning of a basketball season, conditioning, knowing we will be playing the championship at the end.  

 

When I think of basketball conditioning, I think of running ladders: start on the baseline, sprint to the freethrow line, back to the baseline, sprint to halfcourt, back, sprint to the other free throw line, back, then all the way to the other baseline and back.  It’s brutal, and when I was doing them, I sure wasn’t thinking that this “conditioning time” was a “holy time!”

 

But show me a coach that doesn’t condition, and I’ll show you a coach without hope. Conditioning is necessary, and it always pays off later in the season, no matter what the sport, right?  Well we have to go into Lent knowing that our sacrifices are going to pay off.  But it isn’t easy. On Wednesday night, I had been fasting all day, and at about 9pm I started to get that wonderful fasting headache.  

So, almost immediately I was thinking, what do I have in the house to eat?  And I was super tempted by the pretzels, I was sure if I ate some my headache would go away. So I went to the kitchen, opened the cupboard and stared longingly at the bag of pretzels. But then I was like, well, it isn’t that bad, I just have to push thru, and I did, and the headache went away even before I went to sleep.  But in the moment, we are always tempted by comfort, or anything that might satisfy us.

 

I have to imagine that when Jesus was fasting in the desert for 40 days He had that initial fasting headache as well, or just the pure hunger for any food that led the devil to tempt Him to turn stones into bread, right? But Jesus resisted the three temptations.  He had been conditioned well.  He knew the words of God, He didn’t fall for the lies, He was able to stand up to the devil’s attacks. 

 

This was Adam and Eve’s downfall in that first reading, they didn’t know what God had actually said, Eve quoted Him as saying, “you may not eat it or even touch it, or else you will die.” If we go back a chapter, we see that God told Adam, Adam only, He had not created Eve yet, He told Him, “From [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.” 

 

So when Eve was questioned on this command, she added “or even touch it” and she didn’t know what it meant when God said “you shall die” - like immediately or at some other point - and this was the lie from the serpent that she bought into. Whether Adam told her wrong or Eve misunderstood, they were both there, they were both at fault.

 

We can see from this that it is important to know the Word of God, to know what it says and to really understand its meaning, that way we can fend off the lies and half truths of the evil one.

 

Lent is a time for our spiritual conditioning, our spiritual growth.  We focus on three things: Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving. 

Fasting gets rid of something to make room for something else, to get rid of the attachments in our heart that keep us from God. For example, for some people, their stomach is louder than their brain, they are always thinking about their next meal, or their next snack, food essentially becomes a god in their lives. Fasting from food can help teach us to love things in their proper order, God first.  

 

But there are of course way more attachments, and one prominent one in today’s day and age is social media, or just our phones in general.  It used to be Television, but now it is our phones. I heard recently about Padre Pio’s dislike for TV and movies, which is ironic considering how many television shows and movies have been made about him… including a new one that I have been trying to watch.

 

But anyway, Padre Pio’s dislike of television was primarily based on its ability to distract families.  In fact Padre Pio believed television to be a harmful invention that corrupted morals and destroyed family life, and he strongly discouraged people from acquiring televisions. 

 

He told someone once, “The man who invented refrigeration went to heaven, but the man who invented television…” He pointed downward. Padre Pio said in particular, “Instead of talking to one another, family members spent their evenings staring at the [TV] set.”

 

Just replace “TV set” with “cell phone” and we have the same thing today, but even worse, we don’t just have the TV in one room in our house, we have the phones in our pockets!  Padre Pio died in 1968 so he never got to see this cell phone phenomena, but I believe his words and his worries apply even more so today.

 

And how much time would we have to not only talk to one another, but also to pray as a family, or discuss holy things, or even to read the bible. So to fast from social media or our phone in general when we are with each other is to have more time for family, more time in prayer, more time to read the Bible.  Get to know each other, and get to know God.

So that was all on Fasting, because it seems when we think of Lent we put the most emphasis on that Fasting part of it. So we fast from something to make room for something else. Prayer then fills us up and draws us into a deeper relationship with God.  And Almsgiving shows our trust and dependence on God.

 

Prayer and Almsgiving are important and their own homilies in themselves, but through these three things, Mother Church gives us the encouragement to condition ourselves, like a Coach who not only has hope in their team, but great confidence in them. Lent is one of the best ways to prepare spiritually for the big challenges in our lives.

 

Speaking of big challenges, I have some heartbreaking family news to share.  You may remember that I told you my sister Sara was due on March 9th with Baby #6.  Well, at their normal doctor appointment on Friday they couldn’t find a heartbeat for the baby, and yesterday at 1:30pm she delivered a stillborn little boy, his umbilical cord had wrapped tight around his neck.

 

The Archbishop was able to cover for me so I could be there in Waterloo. I prayed a naming ceremony with my family, the named him Charles Stanley.  We were all able to hold him, 6 pound, 6 ounces, 18 ½ inches long. A “little peanut” as my sister called him.  

 

It is heartbreaking for my family, especially after my mom’s death just 9 weeks ago, and my other sister Kristy just had a baby so we were all looking forward to a double baptism, but it wasn’t to be.

 

Now it will be a double burial: I will bury little Charles Stanley in the same grave as my mom, his grandmother, on Tuesday morning.

 

And the temptation here is to blame God and be really mad at Him and leave our faith.  The evil one wants to tempt us like that, saying, “look Andy, look Sara, God doesn’t really love you, or else He would have never let this happen.” That is the temptation, isn’t it?  Many people have fallen from their faith for similar reasons.

But that is a lie that we have to reject.  And I will admit that it is difficult even for me, but I trust God loves me, He loves my family, and He is here in our suffering.  I feel like Job right now, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!”  

 

Our strong faith, which has been conditioned over time, over many difficult seasons, seasons of Lent and seasons of life, allows us to deal with this pain.

 

And often we are tempted to think, or you might even think I am saying, “you just have to condition harder, be stronger and say no to the temptations, say no to the devil.”  Well, that is of course part of it, but I believe a better tactic is to look to Jesus to fight your battles, He did a pretty good job Himself, and He is our savior after all, so let Him fight the devil for you, rather than taking him on yourself. 

 

Last night when I got home, I did what I did when my mom died: I went to Jesus in the Eucharist, and I gave him my pain, my family’s pain, and asked Him for help.

 

The opening prayer for Mass on Thursday said, “Prompt our actions with your inspiration… and further them with your constant help, that all we do may always begin from you and by you be brought to completion.” We do our part in saying yes with our words and actions, but we have to recognize that it’s Jesus that does the work, and He is there with us through every trial and temptation. 

 

Jesus is the new Moses who not just frees us from the place of sin, but also He reverses the curse of Adam and makes us holy. By the obedience of Jesus, we are saved, so when we are experiencing temptation, our first reaction should be to look to Jesus to help, asking Him to fight for us, protect us, and guide us forward.

 

This is part of that trust factor. Trust builds with a deep love, a deep understanding of who someone really is.  Do we trust Jesus to win the game for us?  He is the MVP of our lives, we’ve trained to play our part, but we trust Him with the final shot, we look to Jesus for the win.  May God bless you this Lent as you learn to trust Jesus ever more.