Getting past our past

          Last weekend was a "Deacon Sunday" in which our Permanent Deacons preached the Masses.  Therefore, no homily for the 4th Sunday of Lent.

Homily: 5^th Sunday in Lent – Cycle C

          Human memory is a marvelous thing.  I mean “marvelous” in the true sense: that it is a thing of marvel.  In ways that we only partially understand, it can bring us back to moments from the past and make them seem fresh and new again.  This, of course, cuts both ways.  This power of memory is a good thing when it brings back moments that were positive.  It is a bad thing, however, when it brings back moments that were negative and hurtful.  In regards to this, though, memory is truly neutral: it stores both the positive and the negative without prejudice to them being good or bad.  Interesting, then, that our Scriptures today all seem to point towards us moving past the past: that is, moving past our memory.

          In the first reading, we heard God imploring the people to forget what had happened to them in the past and to look, rather, towards the new thing that he is doing.  We remember (no pun intended) that Isaiah was a prophet during the Babylonian Exile.  The Israelites, therefore, remembered how their sinfulness led to them being abandoned by God into the power of the Babylonians.  God, however, had seen their subjugation and was ready to lead them back out to their home land.  Therefore, he gives them this message: do not think to what was before, but rather pay attention to what I am doing now and see that I am ready lead you out into a new life.  In other words, “Get ready to move ‘past your past’ into a new future that I’m preparing.”

          In the second reading, Paul, writing to the Christians in Philippi, speaks of forgetting what “lies behind” (that is, his former way of life) so that he can turn towards what “lies ahead” (namely, his new life in Christ).  So much so that he says that he considers everything of his former way of life as “loss” for the sake of knowing the salvation of Jesus Christ. In other words, he has decided to “move past his past” in order to enjoy new life in Christ.

          In the Gospel, among other important things that Jesus does in this story, Jesus tells the woman to forget her past and to go forward in her life, without sin.  This woman was caught in adultery and had her shame confounded by being made a public spectacle, solely for the purpose of trying to catch Jesus in a trap.  (And I won’t even bring up how unjust it was that the woman was shamed for adultery, not the man.)  Jesus, however, (after he shames the scribes and Pharisees) shows her that he doesn’t want her to focus on her past—even her immediate past—but rather that he wants her to move “past her past” and towards a future without sin.

          If you haven’t noticed, Lent and confession call us to do the same; and here’s what I mean.  You see, in the first part of Lent, we are challenged to examine ourselves and to acknowledge our failings.  In other words, we’re challenged to look back and to remember our past so as to recognize our sins so that we might repent from them.  Now, in this, the “home stretch” of Lent, we are challenged to look towards Christ and to look, therefore, towards the things that lie ahead.  In other words, as we have recognized our sins of the past and have turned away from them, we are called to forget about our sin—that is, to move “past our past”—and turn ourselves firmly towards the good work that God has given to us.

          Confession, in this light, is really just Lent in miniature.  In order to prepare, we must first look at our past and identify the ways in which we’ve turned from God.  Then, we place these things before God in the sacrament and we ask for his forgiveness.  Once we receive it, we are sent forth to focus again on the work that God has given to us.  In other words, we’re called to move “past our past” into the future to which God has called us.

          Friends, this is super-important to say, because focusing too much on the past—especially our past sins—is to continue to be enslaved by it.  Too often people come to confession and say “I just feel so guilty for my past sins”.  When they do, I often highlight two things: First, that this means that they haven’t forgiven themselves for their sin.  I tell them that, since God is the only one who can condemn them for their sin, to continue to condemn themselves for their sin is, frankly, silly!  Second, I tell them that, to continue to feel guilty for their sin—and, therefore, to dwell on their past sins—is still to be enslaved by them.  If they had already confessed their sin, God has forgiven them and set them free.  Nonetheless, they voluntarily return to being enslaved by them because they can’t let go of the guilt that they feel.  I then remind them that God is only concerned about their past in as much as they have acknowledged their sin and have turned away from it.  Once that occurs, God is only concerned with where they are today and with where they are going in the future.  God is “eternally present”: so the past isn’t “past” to him and the future isn’t “future” to him; rather, all of it is (somehow) right now.  Thus, if someone is living in the past, he/she cannot find God, who is here, now, in the present.

          This is the story of the woman caught in adultery.  She was caught in her sin and condemned before God (that is, Jesus).  Presumably, Jesus could see the sorrow in her heart for her sin and so decided to show her mercy.  Thus, after shaming the scribes and Pharisees to turn away from their pride-filled, murderous rage, he turns to her, sets her free, and charges her not to return to her past, but rather to go forward in a new way when he said, “Go, and from now on do not sin any more”.

          Friends, these last two weeks of Lent must be about making our definitive break from our past sinfulness in order to focus on that which lies ahead.  Otherwise, Easter will pass and we’ll have no great memories to show for it.  A great way to do this will be to spend a lot of time meditating on the Lord’s passion.  I adjure you to take time to think about who Jesus is and about what he suffered because of our sins (yes, yours and mine, right here in 2019).  If you need help, go to the book rack in the gathering space and look for a book that can help you.  Or, if you’re on Formed.org, look for “Three Days that Changed the World”, a talk by Fr. Hector Perez, or some of the other talks available in that online library.  Then, having reflected on his passion, think about being united to him: united in his suffering, yes, but also in his resurrection.  In this, you will begin to see that the things of this world will need to be left behind so that you can focus on this thing—that is, being united to Christ in his resurrection—which lies ahead.

          Finally, make a good confession, if you haven’t already done so, and turn to Our Lady and allow her to lead you by her motherly care.  Friends, this is everything!  And so, please don’t ignore this time.  I promise that you will find great peace in your life if you can learn to leave your past in the past and focus on what lies ahead: which is the glorious life of the resurrected Christ; the life which is foreshadowed here in this Eucharist we celebrate today.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – April 6^th & 7^th, 2019

Remembering and Detachment

Homily: 1^st Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

          Back almost sixteen years ago now, when I was in the throes of my “reversion” (or “adult awakening”) to the Catholic faith, I remember feeling very guilty.  For the first time in my life, I recognized that religion wasn’t just something that you ‘do’, but that it was about a relationship… that it was about the relationship between God and his creation: most especially, with us.  I felt guilty because I recognized that I had been ignoring that relationship.

          As a result, during those first months I threw myself into prayer, fervently asking God what it was that he wanted me to do with my life.  When those prayers eventually led to the consideration of a vocation to the priesthood, I found myself at an impasse.  I had never considered the priesthood and so I didn’t know what to think about it.  “But,” I thought, “this is so radically different from anything that I’ve considered before; so, if I did it, I’m sure that I would be doing what God wanted and not what I wanted.”  I clearly remember making this prayer: “God, I’ve been living my life my own way for twenty-five years, why shouldn’t I do this for you?”

          Soon, however, I learned that feeling like you owe God something is a poor reason to enter the seminary.  Thus, I put the discernment away for a while.  A few years later, when I was blindsided by the notion that I wasn’t yet doing what God wanted me to do with my life, I once again threw myself into prayer.  This time, however, I felt more fearful of damaging the relationship that I had built than guilty for having ignored it.  And so I turned to fasting in an attempt to disinterest myself from anything that could distract me from knowing God’s will.  Eventually, I heard again the call to the priesthood and this time I was sure that it was love, not guilt that motivated me, so I responded and entered the seminary.

          I continued many of my habits of fasting after entering the seminary.  What I found there, however, was that my fasting was becoming a barrier: first to my relationships with my fellow seminarians, and eventually to my relationship with God.  Right fasting is the kind that turns our focus away from ourselves and back towards God and others.  I had become focused on myself and my need to maintain these fasts; and so to turn my focus back towards God and others, I actually had to learn how to “fast from fasting.”  I needed to remember the relationship, and not just the relation.  In order to do so, I needed to detach myself from trying to control it through fasting.

          Remembrance and detachment are two themes that we find in our Scripture readings today.  In our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is instructing the people about making the annual offering of the first fruits of the harvest to God.  What we hear is not the details about the offering itself (for example, how much is to be offered and when), but rather we hear what the Israelites are instructed to say after they’ve made their offering.  It is a statement meant to remind them of why they have brought their offering to the altar.

          First, it’s a remembrance of the place from which they came.  Jacob was a small tribe of only seventy-odd persons when they went down to Egypt.  Yet God made them grow and prosper during that time.  Second, it is a remembrance of how God heard their calls for help when Pharaoh oppressed them with slavery, delivering them from Egypt with mighty signs and wonders.  Third, it is a remembrance of how God led them through the desert and into the fruitful land in which they live, the first fruits from which they have come to offer him.  In other words, it’s a remembrance that it was God who was in control the whole time and that he took care of them, and so their offering is one of thanksgiving for his grace and mercy that continued to care for them up to that day.

          In the Gospel, Jesus’ forty days in the desert produces in him a deep sense of detachment.  In the greatest understatement of all time, the Gospel tells us that, after forty days of not eating, Jesus emerged from the desert and that “he was hungry.”  Duh!  Actually, what the author might have been emphasizing was that he was “weak with hunger.”  The devil seeing this probably thought to himself, “Now is my chance!” and so he tempts him.  Jesus, having detached himself not only from his desires for food and drink, but also from his instincts for survival, and having placed all his trust for survival in his Father, was not fazed by the devil’s temptations.  Jesus knew that his Father was in control, because he had just experienced it for forty days; thus, he could not be moved to betray him now, even though he was physically weak from lack of nourishment.  His fasting produced detachment and thus solidified his relationship with his Father, who cared for him. ///

          “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  This, my brothers and sisters, is our task during Lent: to remember our right relationship with God and with others.  We do this primarily through the three Lenten disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  Fasting, I would argue, is primary: for when we fast, we remind ourselves of the punishment due to us because of our sins and thus acknowledge that God is God and we are not.  Fasting also has the effect of detaching ourselves from our disordered desires for the things of this world: desires that place a barrier between us and God, as well as those around us.  A natural result of this detachment is that we are more available for prayer and have more resources to share with others who are in need, thus facilitating our prayer and almsgiving.  Finally, fasting helps us to remember to place our trust in the fact that God is in control and that he cares for us and so will provide to us whatever it is that we truly need.

          And so, my brothers and sisters, on this first Sunday of Lent, let’s take a look at what we are doing this Lent in order to see where our disciplines are pointing us and let’s ask ourselves these questions: Are our disciplines motivated by guilt and the hope that God will pleased with them and so not ask too much of us?  Or are our disciplines about conversion: that is, about letting go of our control and turning back to God, remembering that his care alone is enough for us?

          If you find yourself (as I often do) more in the first group than in the second group, don’t worry.  We still have about 36 days left to work it all out (which is plenty of time!).  And what a good work that it is.  I promise you that if you do it well, on Easter Sunday you will have forgotten that you are hungry, because you will have remembered God’s love and mercy as you celebrate his resurrected glory.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – March 9^th & 10^th, 2019

Deja vu and the Eucharist

Homily: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle B

If you’ve ever had the experience of déjà vu, you’ll know that it can be somewhat unsettling.  For those who may not have experienced it, the phenomenon known as “déjà vu” is when one has an experience of believing that he or she has seen something that is currently happening as having already happened in the past.  In fact, the words “déjà vu” translate literally from French into “already seen.”  For the most part, it can be a confusing experience because it often occurs when there is no rational reason to believe that the event had occurred already in the past.  I know that I’ve had quite a few occurrences of it in my life and each time I’ve walked away from the experience with more questions than answers.

Interestingly enough, for some the attempt to invoke an experience similar to déjà vu is part of their regular routine.  The Jewish religion, for example, ritually attempts to re-create the events of the past so that it would be as if those events were occurring again for the first time in their midst.  The Jewish Passover feast is a perfect example of this.  It is a “ritual remembering” of the original Passover meal, recreating and in a way re-presenting the events of that night when God slew the first born of the Egyptians and led them out of slavery towards freedom.  In other words, it is a way for them to remember God’s saving acts in the past so as to acknowledge that God’s same saving help continues to be with them today.  This type of remembering—of “making present again” God’s saving acts—is called anamnesis.

You know, I don’t think that we’d have to look too hard to see that we do this kind of remembering all of the time.  Couples—married or otherwise—will often return to the place of their first date on their anniversary to remember what it was like to fall in love and to enkindle those feelings anew.  Families will gather around pictures and slide shows of holidays or vacations together to remember the joy that they shared so as to strengthen their bonds as a family.  Even individuals (perhaps, however, only the introverted ones) will return to that private spot in the park or the woods where they found comfort or peace so as to find it again.  And all this to remember—to try and “make present again”—the good moments that we’ve experienced in our lives.

    In the reading from the Book of Exodus that we heard today, we find the ancient Israelites only a short time into their journey out of slavery in Egypt towards the land of freedom into which God had promised to lead them.  Nonetheless, they seem to have forgotten both the powerful miracles that God had done that freed them from slavery and the oppressive hardships that they endured as we find them grumbling against God and Moses: the suffering of traveling through the desert appearing to them to be worse than what they had endured in Egypt.  In order to remind them of his mighty works—and, thus, his care for them—God provides them with miraculous food from heaven: birds that flock into the camp at night and bread that appears from the morning frost over the ground in the morning.  These daily miracles will occur until they enter the promised land as a reminder of that exhilarating moment when God led them out of slavery and into freedom.

In the Gospel reading, we see the people who had eaten from the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fish seek out Jesus and ask him for more signs.  Jesus uses this opportunity to teach them that his miraculous works were not only meant to feed them in their hunger, but also to remind them of their utter dependence on God.  Jesus, in a sense, commends the people for remembering how God provided bread in the desert for their ancestors, but then clarifies for them that it was not Moses who provided the bread for them, but rather God the Father—who is his Father: and who is the same Father who has provided the “food that endures for eternal life”, his Son Jesus the Christ.  In the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, and in this teaching, Jesus is showing the people that he, in his very person, is “making present again” God’s saving work.

     Hopefully, it won’t be too much of a stretch then when I tell you that the Eucharist that we celebrate here is also, in part, anamnesis.  As all of you know, I’m sure, (and if you don’t know, you’re going to learn right now) the Mass is celebrated in two distinct parts: the Liturgy of the Word, when we hear readings from Holy Scripture that remind us of the sacred events of salvation history and recall the teachings of Jesus and how they apply to us today, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, when we celebrate the holy meal in which Christ’s body and blood is made present to us and we offer them to God as the one perfect and enduring sacrifice that atones for our sins.  In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read that…

Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present.  The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated.  It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present. (1104)

And so, this remembering through re-enacting the events of nearly 2000 years ago makes present for us again Christ’s enduring act of our salvation so as to assure us that God’s saving work continues to be present to us today.

Many of the ancient Jews missed out on Jesus their Savior because they couldn’t imagine that God would make bread come down from heaven again.  They forgot anamnesis and only remembered the manna as something that had happened in the past and was finished.  We do the same thing if we come here and think that this celebration is only an empty ritual memorializing events of the past that have no impact on what is happening today.  But if we come here acknowledging that we, too, are pilgrims wandering through a desert, we will find that God’s Word is not some dead ink on a piece of paper, but a living word, ready to meet us here and to give us guidance.  And if we come here crying out as the ancient Israelites did, “Would that we had died... in Egypt!” then we will find that bread has again come down from heaven onto this altar to strengthen us for our continued journey.

My brothers and sisters, our experience in the mass ought to give us a feeling of déjà vu.  In other words, we ought to feel as if what we experience here today is something that we’ve already experienced before.  When we do, then we will have truly entered into the mystery of what takes place in this liturgy: the blurring of the lines between time and eternity.  May God, who always remains close to us, help us with his grace so that we can truly see the mystery we celebrate and thus be lead to the praise worthy of him, the offering of our selves united to his Son’s eternal sacrifice here on this altar.

Given at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – August 4^th & 5^th, 2018

Fatherhood and the Eucharist

Homily: the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ – Cycle A

          Father’s Day, like Mother’s Day, is a great day because it is a day of remembering: remembering so as to honor.  If we stop for just a moment and think about it, we’ll see that this truly is a beautifully human thing: that we pause to recognize that there is something honorable in parenting (and, specifically, this weekend, in fatherhood).  That this year’s celebration of fathers coincides with our celebration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ provides us with an excellent opportunity to reflect on fatherhood and the Eucharist.

          When we look at the Sacred Scriptures and the life of Jesus we detect many aspects of what it means to be a father.  A father has a real love for his children no matter how they may respond to him.  A father’s deepest desire is for his children to know and experience his love.  He desires the well-being of his children and teaches them how to love others by his example.  A father must at times correct, admonish and warn his children for protection’s sake.  A father always speaks the truth with love, even when it is difficult.  Christian fathers, in particular, must know how to teach their children to receive God’s love in prayer and to taste and see God at work in everyday life. Ultimately, when examined closely, we acknowledge that the fullness of fatherly love is the complete surrender that a man makes of himself for his children.

          We recognize these qualities in the life of Jesus in his preaching, in his teaching, in his healing and deliverance ministry, and especially in his loving relationship with his closest disciples, the apostles.  He speaks of his love for his apostles when he says "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you, abide in my love."  He calls them friends.  He corrects them when he overhears them arguing over who is the greatest.  In order to remain faithful to the Father’s ways, Jesus strongly rebukes Peter with the words, "Get behind me Satan."  He prays for Peter personally as well as for the well-being of all the apostles and those who will believe in him in the future.  Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, calling God “Father”, and teaches them by his example to go off in quiet prayer.  Jesus promises the Advocate who will instruct the apostles in all matters and keep them in the truth.

          Since Christ is the “image of the invisible God”, we can see in him and by his example, the fullness of the Father’s love for us.  Truly, the giving of his Son is the fullest surrender of himself that God the Father could make for us.  The fact that this surrender continues to happen each and every day—each and every hour—on countless altars throughout the world, is evidence of the Father's unfathomable love for us.  Thus, in celebrating the real and enduring presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, what we are celebrating is the real and enduring Love of the Father poured out for us.

          Fatherhood, therefore, is fully realized when a father surrenders himself fully and continually for his children.  In other words, just as the outpouring of God the Father’s love for us is real and enduring, so the outpouring of a father’s love for his children must be both real and enduring.  While I could name for you a number of saints who demonstrated this fatherly virtue heroically, I’d like to introduce you to a great example who has not yet been nominated for sainthood, instead.  He is Karol Josef Wojtila, senior: Saint John Paul II’s father.

          The elder Karol was a retired soldier from the Polish army and a tailor.  He was widowed when young Karol, his son, was the age of nine.  He had already lost one daughter in infancy and later would suffer the loss of his eldest son, Edmund.  He was an upright man and a man of deep piety.  As an example, Saint John Paul II would recall that, after the death of his mother, his father took him into his parish church and led him to the image of Mary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, and said to him: “She is your mother now.”

          While other men may have gotten lost in their grief and become distant from their family, Karol senior remained engaged in the lives of his sons.  He made his young son’s clothes himself, he did the cooking and cleaning, and he encouraged his sons in their friendships, their studies and their sports.  Above all, and especially for Karol junior, Karol senior formed his son’s early faith.  The Pope, himself, describes this best.  He wrote: “My father [was] a deeply religious man.  Day after day I was able to observe the austere way in which he lived.  By profession he was a soldier and, after my mother's death, his life became one of constant prayer.  Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church.”  This real and enduring outpouring of love for his children had a deep and enduring impact on a man whose real and enduring outpouring of love would have a deep and enduring impact on the world.

          My brothers and sisters, the example of Karol Wojtyla senior shows us that being a father is about generating life.  This generation of life doesn’t end, however, after the conception of a child.  Rather, it must continue throughout the child’s life.  In other words, every father must make a real and enduring outpouring of his life so that his children may grow into life.  Logic tells us, of course, that one cannot give something that one does not have and so the question arises: “How can a father be continually filled with life so that he can continually pour out his life for his children?”  The answer is in our Gospel reading today.  There Jesus says: “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.”  The answer, in other words, is the Eucharist.  Therefore, fathers, it behooves you to approach this altar frequently—even daily, if possible—because by receiving the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist you receive Life, himself, and thus are filled with life so that you can pour yourself out for your children.

          And so, my friends, as we celebrate this wonderful gift that has been given to us—the real and enduring presence of Jesus: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Eucharist—and as we recognize and honor the fathers among us, let us give thanks to God the Father in heaven for this amazing gift of his love and let us pray for the fathers among us that, strengthened by this Holy Sacrament, they might continually generate life in their children, like Karol Wojtyla senior did, and thus produce an abundant harvest of life for the world.  Saint Joseph, patron of fathers, pray for us!

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – June 18^th, 2017

Remember... just let go

Happy First Sunday of Lent!  I hope that everybody's Lent has gotten off to a good start.  This last week felt weird to me, but probably because of all the chaos (in my mind) of getting ready for Ash Wednesday and the start of this holy season.

Saturday night, I was able to participate in the Destination Jesus retreat (our diocesan youth retreat) and finally was able to hear some of the incredible ways that God works on the hearts of these young people during this retreat as I heard confessions.  We need to pray for and support our youth!  What a great blessing to be a small part of that experience.

This coming week, I'm heading back "home" to Saint Meinrad for their 'baby-priest' workshop.  Basically, it's an opportunity to review how the first months of priesthood have gone and to get coaching for how to recognize problems now and head them off before they become problems for us in the future.  For me, it will be a welcome opportunity to return to the Hill and catch up with some of my classmates and other friends from the seminary.  I hope that it will also be a good opportunity to take some of these ideas that have been floating around in my head and plan for making them happen.  Stay tuned!

Enjoy the homily.  It's sunny out and I'm going for a walk outside :)

Peace.

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Homily: 1st Sunday of Lent – Cycle C

Back almost ten years ago now, when I was in the throes of my ‘reversion’ to the Catholic faith, I remember feeling very guilty.  For the first time in my life, I recognized that religion wasn’t just something that you ‘do’, but that it was about a relationship… that it was about the relationship between God and his creation: most especially, with us.  I felt guilty because I recognized that I had been ignoring that relationship.
As a result, during those first months I threw myself into prayer, fervently asking God what it was that he wanted me to do with my life.  When those prayers eventually led to the consideration of a vocation to the priesthood, I found myself at an impasse.  I had never considered the priesthood and so I didn’t know what to think about it.  “But,” I thought, “this is so radically different from anything that I’ve considered before; so, if I did it, I’m sure that I would be doing what God wanted and not what I wanted.”  I clearly remember making this prayer: “God, I’ve been living my life my own way for twenty-five years, why shouldn’t I do this for you?”
Soon, however, I learned that feeling like you owe God something is a poor reason to enter the seminary.  Thus, I put the discernment away for a while.  A few years later, when I was blindsided by the notion that I wasn’t yet doing what God wanted me to do with my life, I once again threw myself into prayer.  This time, however, I felt more fearful of damaging the relationship that I had built than guilty for having ignored it.  And so I turned to fasting in an attempt to disinterest myself from anything that could distract me from knowing God’s will.  Eventually, I heard again the call to the priesthood and this time I was sure that it was love, not guilt that motivated me, so I responded and entered the seminary.
I continued many of my habits of fasting after entering the seminary.  What I found there, however, was that my fasting was becoming a barrier: first to my relationships with my fellow seminarians, and eventually to my relationship with God.  Right fasting is the kind that turns our focus away from ourselves and back towards God and others.  I had become focused on myself and my need to maintain these fasts; and so to turn my focus back towards God and others, I actually had to learn how to “fast from fasting.”  I needed to remember the relationship, and not just the relation.  In order to do so, I needed to detach myself from trying to control it through fasting.
Remembrance and detachment are two themes that we find in our Scripture readings today.  In our first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is instructing the people about making the annual offering of the first fruits of the harvest to God.  What we hear is not the details about the offering itself (for example, how much is to be offered and when), but rather we hear what the Israelites are instructed to say after they’ve made their offering.  It is a statement meant to remind them of why they have brought their offering to the altar.
First, it’s a remembrance of where they came from.  Jacob was a small tribe of only seventy-odd persons when they went down to Egypt.  Yet God made them grow and prosper during that time.  Second, it is a remembrance of how God heard their calls for help when Pharaoh oppressed them with slavery, delivering them from Egypt with mighty signs and wonders.  Third, it is a remembrance of how God led them through the desert and into the fruitful land in which they live, the first fruits from which they have come to offer him.  In other words, it’s a remembrance that it was God who was in control the whole time and that he took care of them, and so their offering is one of thanksgiving for his grace and mercy that continues to care for them today.
In the Gospel, Jesus’ forty days in the desert produces in him a deep sense of detachment.  In the greatest understatement of all time, the Gospel tells us that, after forty days of not eating, Jesus emerged from the desert and that “he was hungry.”  Duh!  Actually, what the author might have been emphasizing was that he was “weak with hunger.”  The devil seeing this probably thought to himself, “Now is my chance!” and so he tempts him.  Jesus, having detached himself not only from his desires for food and drink, but also from his instincts for survival, and having placed all his trust for survival in his Father, was not fazed by the devil’s temptations.  Jesus knew that his Father was in control, because he had just experienced it for forty days; thus, he could not be moved to betray him now, even though he was physically weak from lack of nourishment.  His fasting produced detachment and thus solidified his relationship with his Father, who cared for him.
“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  This, my brothers and sisters, is our task during Lent: to remember our right relationship with God and with others.  We do this primarily through the three Lenten disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving.  Fasting, I would argue, is primary: for when we fast, we remind ourselves of the punishment due to us because of our sins and thus acknowledge that God is God and we are not.  Fasting also has the effect of detaching ourselves from our disordered desires for the things of this world: desires that place a barrier between us and God, as well as those around us.  A natural result of this detachment is that we are more available for prayer and have more resources to share with others who are in need, thus facilitating our prayer and almsgiving.  Finally, fasting helps us to remember to place our trust in the fact that God is in control and that he cares for us and so will provide to us whatever it is that we truly need.
And so, my brothers and sisters, on this first Sunday of Lent, let’s take a look at what we are doing this Lent in order to see where our disciplines are pointing us and let’s ask ourselves these questions: Are our disciplines motivated by guilt and the hope that God will pleased with them and so not ask too much of us?  Or are our disciplines about conversion: that is, about letting go of our control and turning back to God, remembering that his care alone is enough for us?
If you find yourself (as I often do) more in the first group than in the second group, don’t worry.  We still have about 36 days left to work it all out (which is plenty of time!).  And what a good work that it is.  I promise you that if you do it well, on Easter Sunday you will have forgotten that you are hungry, because you will have remembered God’s love and mercy as you celebrate his glory.

Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – February, 17th, 2013