Lent I

• “I’m only human” * - we tend to say when we experience some kind of failure, when, despite our best efforts, things do not tend to work out.

And it is true that in our human condition we have certain limitations: our health, time, that we are, regrettably, constrained to being in one place at one time, not many of us have been known to bilocate… We are only human.

But this is also the humanity, with its limitations and fallible nature that Christ has decided to take on Himself, and thus to bless and sanctify.

Which little preamble brings us to today’s Gospel, in which we read of the Lord’s fasting - in a short and brief, very Marcian way.

The Holy Spirit stirs the Lord to enter the wilderness, to be tempted. Apart from the fact that he had wild beasts and angels as companions, we read very little of this time in Mark’s Gospel. But we do read that he was there for forty days, just like Noah shut up in the Ark, and just like our Lenten observance.

The Old and the New Testament seem to once again meet in the person of Christ. Noah’s time in the Ark is an image pointing forward to the Lord’s life: being tossed about in the tempest of temptations for forty days, then to be established as the sign of the covenant that all can look up to. Our fasting is pointing backwards to the Lord’s life, drawing strength from it. But what we do isn’t just a sort of sign, pointing to the Lord’s life, but we actually take part in it. We participate in the Lord’s time in the desert; as he participates in our fasting through Lent.

Christ enters the wilderness and fasts. We fast because we wish to experience the same victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil that the Lord won, through his fasting, and then, at his Resurrection. Christ entered into the wilderness to provide aid for our weakness, to fight the battles ahead of us and with us. We enter the 40-day fast, because we want to find the Lord’s strength there.

The presence of Christ sanctifies even our weakness. He fights our battles with us, and we draw strength from His incarnation. He took on our human nature to give it His own life.

So when we enter this spiritual desert, we will not only find temptation, but the possibility of victory through Christ’s strength.

When we fast, we do not only find there difficulty and suffering, we do not only find a challenge to grow in self-restraint, but growth in spirit and fulfilment with God’s presence.

When we pray, we do not just pour our hearts to God, but experience His closeness.

When we do good works, we do not only help others, but become Christ’s tools in providence and care for this world.

Whatever we do throughout Lent - fasting, prayer, good works - it is more than just human efforts, as long as we do it with the intention of imitating Christ.

And we can be certain that in our imitation of the Lord, we will find that our human frailty takes on the power of Christ. Yes, we are fallible, weak, finite, mortal, yes, we are dust and to dust we shall return. But our humanity has been given strength through the Incarnation. Our self-denial and even our temptation has been filled with Christ’s presence. Our suffering can be united to that of Christ and thus can bear fruit for the salvation of the world. Even our death can be a sign of God’s grace and mercy for others, and for us, a means of the resurrection.

So as Noah entered the Ark for 40 days and found at the end the establishment of a covenant with God; and as the Lord fasted for 40 days in the desert to become the New Covenant with humanity, we also fast in imitation of Him for 40 days, that our lives might become signs of God’s love for the world. Because through our fasting, as we unite our lives to the life of Christ, as we also face our demons and learn to rely on God’s grace for victory over temptation, we are changed. Our human frailty will become endowed with the power of the resurrection.