Mass and Confession
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Sunday March 10th : 1st Sunday of Lent
St. Francis Parish | March 6, 2019, 9:39 pm | Reflections
We hear in today’s Gospel from Luke 4:1-13, that Jesus was, “led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.” As we make our own journey through Lent, we must pay attention to how the devil is tempting us in our lives. The first step is the actual admission that he is in fact tempting us. It is easy to dismiss this as we believe so much in ourselves that we feel we are in control of our choices as opposed to giving into temptation. If they are unhealthy choices, we believe that we can simply decide to stop making them. We are so caught up in ourselves that we lose sight of where we draw our strength from.
During Lent, we are called to a greater focus on Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving. This is a great opportunity for us, through humility, to remember that there is only one true source of strength in our lives. As we make greater efforts towards each of these tenets, we will discover just how weak we are and how dependent on God we must be. In our weakness, we will more clearly understand that what we dismissed as “choices”, truly are temptations. As we make this commitment throughout Lent, our dependence on God will be much more profound.
So Brothers and Sisters, as we continue into this Lenten journey, let us Fast from faith in ourselves and let us Pray for strength from God. Drawing from this renewed faith in God, let us look to make a greater sacrifice of worldly things so that we can fulfill His great commandment of “love of neighbor” through Stewardship and our giving of Alms.
