During the course of the centuries, Lent’s purpose and meaning hopped the track as its main focus moved to penance to giving up something, to fasting. By defining penance and fasting as Lent’s exclusive purpose, we lost what it was really all about.

Transfiguration event for the Apostles and for us

Gospel: Luke 9:28b–36
This is my chosen Son; listen to him.

We who live now, in the time of the Holy Spirit and the church, can hope to participate in the glory previewed in the transfiguration of Jesus. In writing to the Philippians, Paul reminds them and us that at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ “our lowly body” will be conformed with “his glorified body.”

As the disciples spend more time with Jesus, as they hear what he is saying and see what he is doing, they must have been asking, “Who is this Rabbi to whom we have attached ourselves; who is this Jesus?” Strangely, the answer comes from their own mouths.

What are my temptations?

Gospel: Luke 4:1–13
Jesus…was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.

Lent helps us find our true self. Jesus did that in the desert. By denying who he was not, he affirmed his true identity—one sent by God to walk our human path in fidelity to God, even in times of failure and pain.

Woven into the gospel tradition is a poignant theme in the life of Jesus: the constant temptation to take the easy way out, to give in to the cry of the crowd, to accept adulation as a king.