First Sunday of Lent: Joy Through Suffering

by the Rev. Francis T. Gignac, S.J.

ent begins appropriately each year with a gospel reading about Jesus being tested for 40 days in the desert. This year the reading is from the gospel according to Mark (1:12-15), the earliest and most primitive of the Gospels, which tells the story in simple terms. There, the Spirit of God drives Jesus out into the desert, traditionally the haunt of evil spirits, for a trial of strength with the forces of evil.

In Matthew and Luke, the story is expanded by describing what the temptations of Jesus were, namely, to worldly ambition that could jeopardize the very nature of his mission. Of course, there is no parallel story in the gospel according to John, because that writer always portrays Jesus in complete control of his destiny and not subject to any human weakness.

The background for the story of the trial of Jesus in the desert was the belief that the Messiah was the divine agent who would destroy the kingdom of evil, here represented by Satan, with whom Jesus is pictured as joining battle on Satan's own turf. The trial lasts 40 days, the traditional period of trial derived from the 40 years (roughly a generation) during which Israel was thought to have wandered in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt.

Jesus here achieves a decisive victory over Satan, but it is not the end of the war. This gospel pictures the battle continuing in the ministry of Jesus, as he rebukes demons and drives out evil spirits as signs of his messianic activity. And the author implies that the struggle will continue, too, in the lives and sufferings of the Christians of his own day.

After this story, the author pictures Jesus proclaiming the imminent arrival of God's kingdom. The challenge is issued in words taken from later Christian terminology: "Repent and believe in the gospel" - exactly how the early Christian preachers summarized what they thought people had to do to be saved.

The Old Testament reading (Gen 9:8-15) describes the gracious intervention of God after another legendary period of trial and testing, the 40 days of the flood. In the Priestly tradition from which this section is taken, the flood marked the end of the first period of the world and inaugurated a new era. This story of the nearly universal destruction of the human race, during which the world almost reverted to precreation chaos, was motivated by the universal spread of corruption and violence.

The Priestly tradition concludes this myth by picturing God making an everlasting covenant with all living creatures, promising never again to destroy the earth. And all would be reminded of this everlasting covenant every time they saw a rainbow in the sky.

The second reading contains a rather enigmatic passage from First Peter (3:18-22), in origin an early Christian bishop's homily at an Easter baptism during a time of persecution toward the end of the first century. He compares the trials and sufferings the new Christians will have to undergo to a baptismal bath corresponding to the great flood at the time of Noah. Then he claims that they will triumph through suffering just as Jesus did. Those who die symbolically with Christ in baptism will also rise with him, pictured here as mounting in triumphant procession to the abode of God in the seventh heaven.

During these 40 days of Lent, our spiritual journey will take us through suffering to joy, through Calvary to Easter. Lent was once a period of preparation for baptism, as in our restored rite of the catechumenate. For the baptized Christian, it is a period of purification. May this Lent prepare us to recommit ourselves to Christ when we renew our baptismal vows at Easter.

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Revised: 27 October 1997

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