Cycle A Lent 1st Week Sunday

Piri Thomas wrote a book entitled Down These Mean Streets in which he describes his
conversion from being a convict, a drug addict, and an attempted murderer to becoming an
exemplary Christian.
He narrates that one night he was lying on his cell bunk in prison. Suddenly it occurred to him
what a mess he had made of his life. And then, he felt an overwhelming desire to pray. But he
was sharing the cell with another prisoner called “the thin kid.” So he waited for him to fall
asleep.
When he thought that “the thin kid” was already asleep, he climbed out of his bunk, knelt
down on the cold concrete floor, and prayed. He describes his prayer with the following words:
I told God what was in my heart . . . . I talked to him plain . . . no big words . . . . I talked to
him of my wants and lack, of my hopes and disappointments . . . . I felt like I could even cry . . .
something I hadn’t been able to do for years.
After Piri finished his prayer, a small voice said, “Amen.” It was “the thin kid”. “There we
were,” Piri said, “he was lying down, head on bended elbows, and I still on my knees. No one
spoke for a long while. Then the kid whispered, “I believe in Dios also.”
The two young men ended up talking for a long time. Then Piri climbed back into his bunk.
“Good night Chico,” he said. “I’m thinking that God is always with us—it’s just that we aren’t
with him.”

Piri’s story is a beautiful illustration of what Jesus reminds us in today’s gospel: “Repent, and
believe in the Gospel!”
This invitation is actually a twin invitation. The first invitation is to “repent” and the second is
to “believe in the gospel.”

First point, repent. To repent means to recognize evil in our lives and to turn our backs on it.
It also means that we face up to our sins and to make the choice to turn away from it.
Like Piri Thomas, most of us may have experienced being overwhelmed by our sins that we
felt a strong desire to pray, to seek help to change our lives. We may have perhaps been
overcome with shame when we have become aware of our selfishness that puts our comfort
ahead of others’ needs. We may have experience remorse when we became aware of pride that
keeps us from admitting our faults. We may have been overcome with guilt when we became
aware of laziness that keeps us from helping and reaching out to others.
“To repent and reform” means to face up to these evil tendencies in our lives and to do
something about them.

This brings us to the second invitation of Jesus: “Believe in the gospel.”
 This means to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that he came to save us. It means to
seek out Jesus, especially in the sacrament of Reconciliation, and to receive from his forgiveness
and healing.
It means to do what Pili Thomas did after he saw the evil in his life. He turned to God for help
knowing that he is helpless and weak in front of sin. He believed in the “good news” that God
had sent Jesus into the world to save sinners like himself.

A Christian author once noted that “Many people do not recognize Christ, because they do not
recognize themselves as sinners. If I am not a sinner, then I have no need of Christ.” As Piri
himself puts it, I’m thinking that God is always with us—it’s just that we aren’t with him.”
And why do we refuse to recognize ourselves as sinners? It is perhaps because we fear the
punishment of God, we fear that we will be rejected by God who wishes us to be holy the way he
is holy. Or we can be on the other side of the spectrum. We think that we are the worst of sinners
and that we are not worthy of God’s love and attention. And so we live our faith life trying to
impress God, trying to please him so he will not punish us or maybe to gain his favor. When we
do good we say, “nagbabayad lang sa kasalanan . . .”
But today’s first reading tells us who God is.
New Covenant: “See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants
after you . . . that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood.
This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come . . . I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a
sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
God makes a covenant and promise to Noah: never again shall I destroy what I have created.
God see his creation as good and is worth saving, even at the price of the life of his only begotten
son.
In this Lenten Season, we are invited to enter into our sinful nature. But let us not forget that
we do this always in the context of God’s love and mercy.

“The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope,
by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope
to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the
Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God
will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun
because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.”

- C. S. Lewis

We try to be good to
- Please God
- Get the approval of others
Do you like to look at rainbows? When you see a rainbow, have you ever thought that God is
looking at it too?
The next time that multicolored spectrum of beauty bends over the landscape, take time to view
it in the light of God’s promise to Noah: “The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it
to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature” (Gen. 9:16).
The rainbow was a reminder of God’s gracious pledge that He would never again destroy the
earth with water. A worse calamity, though, is coming. Peter warned, “The heavens and the earth
. . . are reserved for fire until the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 3:7).
The rainbow, seen against the clouds of judgment, spoke of grace. But the rainbow fades when
compared to God’s grace shown at Calvary. At the cross, God’s wrath against sin was placed on
Jesus Christ, the believer’s substitute. When the Light of the world met the storm clouds of
judgment at Calvary, a beautiful bow of promise and forgiveness came into view. And one day
believers will gather around God’s rainbow-circled throne (Rev. 4:1-3).