Collect
Almighty God, whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness, and was tempted as we are, yet without sin: give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit; and, as you know our weakness, so may we know your power to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Heavenly Father, your Son battled with the powers of darkness, and grew closer to you in the desert: help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer that we may witness to your saving love in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
Lord God, you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven; by it you nourish our faith, increase our hope, and strengthen our love: teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread, and enable us to live by every word that proceeds from out of your mouth; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – Deuteronomy 26.1–11
Moses said to all Israel: When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, ‘Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.’ When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.’ You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
Psalm 91.1–2, 9–16
1 Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High ♦
and abides under the shadow of the Almighty,
2 Shall say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my stronghold, ♦
my God, in whom I put my trust.’
9 Because you have made the Lord your refuge ♦
and the Most High your stronghold,
10 There shall no evil happen to you, ♦
neither shall any plague come near your tent.
11 For he shall give his angels charge over you, ♦
to keep you in all your ways.
12 They shall bear you in their hands, ♦
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
13 You shall tread upon the lion and adder; ♦
the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.
14 Because they have set their love upon me, therefore will I deliver them; ♦
I will lift them up, because they know my name.
15 They will call upon me and I will answer them; ♦
I am with them in trouble, I will deliver them and bring them to honour.
16 With long life will I satisfy them ♦
and show them my salvation.
Epistle – Romans 10.8b–13
But what does it say?
‘The word is near you,
on your lips and in your heart’
(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
Gospel – Luke 4.1–13
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone.” ’
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written,
“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” ’
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,
“He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you”,
and
“On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” ’ When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Sermon on First Sunday of Lent
You may know that I enjoy mystery novels even more than my more academic and historical reading. One fictional character I find very engaging is Cadfael, a monk from the pen of Ellis Peters. I think you have all seen him on the small screen. I found a resumé of the characters which started my thinking for today’s ramblings.
Abbot Radulfus [is] the median, the ideal abbot, with whom Cadfael has a deep empathy and understanding. Both [prior] Robert and [the former abbot] Heribert also serve to show the cloistered and worldly perils, respectively, that Cadfael balances through his "constant war of conscience". Peters shows Cadfael at the heart of healthy, fulfilling monastic life, which may be flawed by its humanity but is well-intentioned. It is Cadfael, the fulcrum, who helps to maintain the health and perspective that overcomes crises of justice that arise from within and without the community. It may be argued that Peters creates him as a version of St Benedict’s vision of holy fellowship and service. (from Wikipedia, Cadfael)
I looked up Cadfael because I read another novel recently, one by Richard Coles, which began with a quotation from The Rule of St Benedict.
And so we are going to establish a school for the service of the Lord. In founding it we hope to introduce nothing harsh or burdensome. But if a certain strictness results from the dictates of equity for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity, do not be at once dismayed and fly from the way of salvation, whose entrance cannot but be narrow. For as we advance in the religious life and in faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God’s commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love. Thus, never departing from His school, but persevering in the monastery according to His teaching until death, we may by patience share in the sufferings of Christ and deserve to have a share also in His kingdom.
This description of a monastery as a school, when I read it along with the description of Cadfael in mind, sent me down the track of considering just what the religious life is. The monk who is separated from “the world” – that world in which we secular people live – this monk has a very intense life, surrounded only by others who have taken up that particuliar life, bound together with the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience. They chose that life of love and discipline, a life that leads to a full faith.
When I studied, I took a course about western monasticism. We looked at The Rule because it was the aim, the ideal, of all religious communities. It describes of a life of moderation, in which all help each other to share in that reflection of heaven upon earth, where love defines how people behave with each other. Benedict did not want to introduce anything “harsh or burdensome”. It is a life of quiet, there are no raised voices – but when voices do rise it is an emergency, or only demanded by the liturgy, when voices sing the praise of God.
Ora et labora. That is “the motto of the Benedictine order, signifying the importance of balancing spiritual devotion in prayer (ora) with physical labour (labora) in daily life.” (Wikipedia) All western monasticism is based on it. Every order is founded on The Rule – even those very radically different orders which say they won’t change because there is no deviation from The Rule in their way of life. They follow Benedict even if their order has its own peculiarities – for instance that silent order where there is no speech at all.
Richard Coles’ main character realises that whether you live in a secluded community or in the rough and tumble of “the world” you have to choose. For the monk it is the consistent choice of The Rule, a rule which fosters life in all its fullness, a rule which is set in a community which has only one goal, that of salvation for all. Those of us who have not chosen The Rule have to negotiate individual choices made by the people around us – and those choices may not be mutually beneficial, in fact they may be inimical to each other, becoming the cause of wars between nations or the disputes between groups in a community or even the arguments in the midst of families themselves. We might even think that personality problems signify the pull of one thing or another in an individual’s life.
The notion of choice, what the theologians call “free will”, is central to life. It is especially important in today’s political climate. Choice is central to everything we do – where we send our children to school, whether we take the bus or the car, who our doctor should be, everything has become a matter of our own personal choice.
We choose to act in particular ways – there is always a moment of selecting one thing over another. That moment is what the religious life is all about. Whether we have chosen “the cowl” or “the world”, we have to make that selection consistently, or else there is something radically wrong with the world in which we live and move and have our being. That free choice is the point on which our world ultimately rests. We must discern what that point is and we have to know that that point is where our religious sensibilities ground us.
Reading about Cadfael and studying The Rule of St Benedict will help us to discover how we can be authentic in our relations with other people. When we read about dubious characters, or see them on screen, don’t we get scared off behaving in those ways? Don’t we begin to see that the noble way of the good for its own sake is the only way to act? The actions of the wicked character in a novel remind us that we can be held culpable of the very same actions which we condemn as they unfold on the page as we read about them or on the screen as we watch them. We realise that no one is completely innocent when it comes to misdeeds, are they?
Benedict was right when he reminds us that “a certain strictness results from the dictates of equity for the amendment of vices or the preservation of charity.” Don’t parents do this for their children? They constrain their children in their love to keep them safe. Don’t we in our working lives also feel the constraint of the HSE and our bosses and other workers? Don’t we conform to safety rules for the sake of good order, a “certain strictness” for the sake of the “preservation of charity”?
These Rules may be Common Law, Health and Safety, or those of Benedict. We follow them because ultimately they allow us to live out our love for one another. “As we advance in the religious life and in faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God’s commandments with unspeakable sweetness of love.” As we go on in life that constricting red tape disintegrates and we are absolutely free to act for the sake of the other person.
I have come to the conclusion that the religious life is a reflection of how we live in the world and Lent can be the real expression of that reality. I would venture to say that we should stand with “Cadfael at the heart of healthy, fulfilling life”. If we realise that, whether in our out of the cloister, we are all living in that “school for the service of the Lord”, a school in which we all really do want to live, even if we might have forgotten the fundamental choice of love we made long ago. Let us use Lent to remember, and resolve ourselves to, that choice of love.