Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 9 March 2014

Fr Robin Gibbons

First Sunday of Lent March 2014

By happy coincidence Eastern and Western Christian Churches share Lent and Holy Easter together this year. Perhaps this season should be a real time for learning a bit more about each other and to actively pray that one of the first barriers to be overcome may be finding a common date for Easter! The Eastern Churches began Lent on Monday , the West on Ash Wednesday, but together we journey with the Lord, through the fasting of our hearts and bodies, in works of prayer and love, towards that great feast of feasts.

Because this is a shared journey, I hope you will not mind if I occasionally bring in some thoughts and reflections from our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters.

For Roman Catholics this Sunday’s readings have a very distinctive focus both on our human roots in the earth, we are all ‘adam’, made of dust, and have the capability, exemplified in the story of Eve and Adam to choose good and bad and to live with our choice!

Matthew in the Gospel shows us the three temptations of Christ by Satan. These have a specific challenge for Jesus, who in a previous section at His baptism has been called, ‘My Son , the beloved’, revealing his divine origin and being. In these temptations we see `Jesus being challenged to prove who he is, to show his power and to give Satan oversight of the earth. Jesus resists all these challenges to a false idea of God’s power and presence.

He comes to inaugurate the Kingdom of God by uniting earth and heaven, not dividing it as Satan wishes. This is a Kingdom turned upside down, where power is God’s word, the law is love of neighbor, self and God shown in deed and action and where God is not tested but accepted in a relationship of trust! Paul in Romans reminds us that in Jesus we are made righteous, that we share in God’s own self.

In the Greek-Catholic and Orthodox tradition this Sunday is the Sunday of the ‘Triumph of the Icons’, the Sunday of ‘Orthodoxy’ where we rejoice that the Church allowed art to be used at the service of our faith, especially in the Icons of Christ, Mary and the Saints. But it has a deeper Lenten meaning, for on earth the true icons of Christ - are ourselves!