Awaken Series: Reflection on the 1st Sunday of Lent
By Deacon Michael Ruf
Contributing writer
Nutrition and health experts will tell you that a healthy person can live without food for up to two to three months as long as they have water.
Take away both food and water, and the number shrinks to less than a week. Clean water is essential for good health and for life itself.
It seems too that water is essential for our spiritual health. Water is a large part of the story of salvation history that we read on this first Sunday of Lent.
In the book of Genesis, the story of God’s relationship with the earth and humanity unfolds. Our reading today comes after the flood and God’s conversation with Noah. God establishes a covenant with the earth, Noah and his descendants (including us). This covenant represents a deep bond of love between God and his creation. God promises “that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood” (Gen:9:11).
Sadly, even with this promise the story of salvation history reveals how often people have broken their covenants with God and returned to sin and division.
The second reading from 1 Peter takes the story of Noah and the floodwater a step deeper. He uses the flood to prefigure baptism that cleanses not the dirt from the body but rather our souls, giving us life in the spirit. When we are baptized into God’s family once again God’s offer of covenant is renewed.
Mark’s Gospel gets right to the point of why Jesus is here. We heard it a few weeks ago and again on the first Sunday of Lent: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
It is clear from the beginning of the story in Genesis, up to the time of Jesus’ call for repentance that God so desires to be united with us. He seeks a covenantal relationship with us and we in turn are asked to seek him. He calls us to empty ourselves and humbly be willing to enter into a reality greater than ourselves.
Just as the human body needs water to survive so too our souls need the nourishment of the sacraments and prayer. Lent is our time to go into the desert of our hearts, to examine our personal covenant, the love song, between the Lord and ourselves. To pray with sincerity and to open ourselves to trust the words of our psalm, “Make known to me your ways, LORD; teach me your paths. Guide me by your fidelity and teach me” (Ps 25:4).
God longs to be in a relationship with us. Turning back to him and fulfilling our personal responsibility to live the gospel is only possible through grace. As we navigate these 40 days of Lent let us pray for that grace, to keep in mind it is in the ordinary days we are called to return to the extraordinary promise of God’s covenantal love.
Dc. Michael Ruf serves the linked communities of Christ the King and Pope John XXIII in Liverpool. He also is a spiritual director affiliated with the Spiritual Renewal Center.
