Father Mark

You are invited to observe a Holy Lent

During Lent we talk of repentance, resisting temptation, and the Passion of Jesus.  We dramatize the story of His final days and make movies which reenact those terrible moments of pain and suffering Jesus underwent for our sake.  

We live in a world of competing stories. In such a world, we must know the Christian story in order to resist the false stories that seek to take us captive. The reading in Luke 4:1-13 is the familiar story of Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the wilderness. This story is so well known that we sometimes conflate the different accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke into one story about Jesus’ temptation. But each account is unique from the others.  As we read Luke’s version carefully, we can see two competing stories: the story that Jesus taps into in order to resist the devil and successfully navigate the temptations laid before him and the narrative the devil presents.

 We have stories as well, concerning our temptations with the devil and our challenges to be the kind of person we seek to be.  We face temptation each day and we try to resist that still small voice which whispers into our ear, leading us away from the path we intend to take.  

Lent is a good time to take on new things and one thing we all should take on this year is the attitude that all of our stories and resolutions find their genesis in God.  We can resist temptation if we turn to God; through God, we are able.

Peace, 

Father Mark+