First Sunday of Lent - February 26th, 2023 (Click Here for Readings)

Instead of being swayed by just one serpent as Eve was, we are engulfed today by multiple serpents disguised as nice neighbors, friendly co-workers and secular minded celebrities; serpents so cunning that we often don’t realize their influence on us.

“Wheat from the chaff” sifting of TV, social and print media today requires a discernment we can only obtain through God’s incomparable wisdom. And that sifting also applies to our “face time” with those whom we encounter.

The biggest obstacles to our closeness to God are our modern day “trees of life” that give us a feeling of abundance and invincibility, or becoming Godlike as the serpent told Eve. Those trees could be our financial nest egg to maintain our social status, a clique of friends we rely on to preserve our well-being, or our own invented paradise of self-indulgence.

So instead of munching on apples from our worldly trees of life and bearing God’s rejection of us as Adam did, let us focus on the tree of Christ, THE CROSS, and bask in God’s ever-present love of us.

When we stay alert to our modern-day serpents who place God as an adversary as the serpent did with Eve, we’ll listen more wisely when they tell us that this or that sin is no big deal, or that nobody’s perfect and we’re all going to spend some time in purgatory.

It's their way of leading us to temporal worldly freedom at the expense of losing the true and everlasting freedom we'll gain through our love for God.

Let us take advantage of this Lenten season and go to “our desert” to ponder our recent temptations of material wealth, power and self-reliance as Christ experienced. His forty days of resisting the devil’s temptations should be our model to follow and gain access to his fullness through our fasting, prayer and self-denial of temporal pleasures.

Though God may not lead us into temptation, he’ll be pleased when we show our resistance to it, especially during our weaker moments of depression, anxiety, loneliness and vulnerability. Our resistance will always bear great fruit on some way.

We can reign in death or reign in life depending on the tree of life we choose; the tree of Adam or the tree of Christ. Christ’s gift of acquittal on the Cross eclipsed the judgement and condemnation of the first sin. Adam disobeyed and Christ obeyed. We have been acquitted, not because of our efforts but of God’s gift of restoring us to him.

Let us savor this Lenten season with praise and thanksgiving for the opportunities it affords us to bring ourselves ever closer to Christ.

(For more reflections on the Sunday Readings, Go Here)