First Sunday of Lent 2010
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan [where he had just been baptized by John and the Holy Spirit had come upon him] and [he]was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there by the devil for forty days”
On Wednesday morning last on my way home from the meting of the Irish Bishops with the Holy Father in Rome, I had to stop in Tulsk. There I met the Parish priest on his way out to the church with a bowl of ashes in his hand. He signed me on the forehead with the ashes, saying ‘Remember you are dust and into dust you will return’
I am dust. Dirt. Soil. Clay. Earth.
The first thing we did in Rome was we celebrated mass at the tomb of St Peter, a most sacred and revered place for Christians for 2000 years. Cardinal Bertone, the Secretary of State and the Pope’s second-in-command as it were, spoke to us.
One of the things he said was ‘Only if we arrive at an authentic and sincere humility can the grace of God truly work deeply for us and thus realise a true renewal’
‘An authentic and sincere humility’… The word humility comes from the latin word humus which means clay, earth, soil, dirt, dust.
There was something right about coming home from the meeting with the Pope on Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the beginning of Lent: it is the day when we are brought down to earth, ‘remember you are dust’….
Lent is the season of repentance. Our visit to Rome was about repentance. About the acknowledgment of abject failure and downright sin in our lives, as Bishops, as priests, as members of the people of God. It was about saying sorry and asking forgiveness again for the abject failure by us bishops to be good shepherds, to listen to the cry and the pain of little children. It was about the sin of self-preservation, and defensiveness, and putting our own ‘good name’, that of our colleagues and our Church before the safety and care of those ‘little ones’ in whose defence Jesus himself had been angry with his disciples when they were pushing them aside.
This terrible failure has had devastating consequences for the lives of those children and of their families.
Did it not happen because we fell for the temptations that Jesus resisted in the wilderness in today’s Gospel?.
The evil spirit, the Devil, tempted Jesus to take the easy way out of the sharp hunger he was experiencing in the desert, along with the night cold and the desolation and isolation that takes hold of us when we find ourselves threatened by something we can’t face.
Jesus was never defensive and did not give in to the false promise of relief and comfort and control that the evil one held out to him. Rather he took his stand on the Word of God, trusting in the Father whose Spirit was in him, and he stayed in the desert place.
The Holy Father reminded us that all that has been so starkly put before us in the Murphy and other reports has brought about a ‘grave crisis’ in the church because now there is a ‘breakdown in trust in the Church’s leadership, and her witness to the Gospel and its moral reaching is damaged’
Many of you are justifiably angry, deeply upset and shocked by all that has emerged.
It is the time for acknowledging sin and asking pardon and as your church leader, shepherd and bishop I do so today before you, on my own behalf and on behalf of all bishops and priests who have so failed and sinned.
What I want to say also on this first Sunday of Lent, that from the dust in which I now find myself, I take heart as Jesus took guidance, from the Word of God we have just heard. ‘Jesus was led’ the Gospel tells us, not just into the wilderness, but ‘through the wilderness’ and through all the temptations that came his way there.
Can I ask you today to take with me the hand of Jesus, to turn to Him whom we so need now as Saviour, to take with him the Word of God as our only guide and light, to travel this Lenten wilderness time together, and to trust above all in the deepest truth of our faith…be it 40 long days or 40 longer years, Easter will come.