General. The First Sunday of Lent introduces a period of forty days when we recall the Passion, Death and Resurrecton of Our Lord Jesus. It is somewhat of a chronology of our Salvation intertwined with the history and salvific events of the Jewish people from under the Phaorah’s clutches (the evil one who seeks money and power) that pass us through a period when we can understand the more fully the nature of Thanksgiving underlying the Eucharistic sacrifice we are about to celebrate. We can also be given enough grace and inner light to understand the mystery of Christ, the Anointed one, who as Priest, Prophet and Prince delivers man from sin and passes him from death to life, from slavery to freedom, from the yeastless bread of hard work to the sweet wine of the joy of life.

Genesis. The Church is presenting us with a reading about man’s creation and man’s first fall into sin to introduce us, at the beginning of lent, to the history of salvation. The main stumbling block of man’s progress towards God has always been his disobedience towards God’s biddings, thinking that he can stand on his own without receiving advice from anyone or any superior being. It has always been a matter of superior knowledge – who knows best about anything – to which man does not bow his head, even before God other than, perhaps, at the moment of death. Although life and strength are associated with intellectual superiority and lack of obedience, this event will lead us to sing of ‘O felix culpa’during the Easter Vigil.

St Paul to the Romans. Humanity acts as a cohesive force in all its doings no matter how much we may think that hidden sins do not show in outside human behaviour. Just as sin entered the world through one human being, so has grace and salvation been restored through one person, Jesus Christ. Divine justice has been accomplished by the Son of God for the salvation of mankind. This justice, contrary to the ways of the world, consisted in the forgiveness which Jesus gave those who were inveighing against him while he was crucified. Jesus was obedient to the Father and laid down his life for sinful humanity, for its very sin of disobedience, to obtain justification for it, or the justice brought about by the New Testament of love.

St Matthew. Jesus’ temptations are our temptations to this very day. Wealth, power and glory are in some way or another our temptations and we frequently succumb to them. Wealth may impede us from attending to our spiritual duties to increase our economic well-being even beyond our needs. Power drives us to be vicious and cruel at times towards our neighbours little remembering God’s mercy shown towards us even as sinners. We normally usurp glory from whosoever it is due to be given to, even from God Himself.

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