A RETURN TO HOPE - TO THE ROOTS

Remembrance, Recognition & Resilience 

First Sunday in Lent - March 9, 2025

Deuteronomy 26: 4-10; Romans 10: 8-13; Luke 4: 1-13

The Lenten call is always to return and in this jubilee year of hope, it is a return to hope that we are called to. Yes, we have begun our jubilee lenten journey to Return to Hope and the Word on this first Sunday of the season, invites us to go to our roots! That is a radical return indeed, returning to the roots and finding our hope there! 

Returning to hope is returning to our roots because it is a matter of remembrance! Recalling and Reaffirming how good God has been to us, is the most fundamental way to return to our roots and that will certainly take us to a sense of hope. The Creed that we proclaim habitually, be it in the solemn eucharists or in our daily prayers, is a tool to this call, to remember, recall and reaffirm what God has been to us. Today in the first reading we have the creed of the people of God and in the second reading the creed of a Christian... if we carefully observe them, they are but a recalling of the goodness of the Lord. 

This is a challenge for most of us, because when we are through a crisis situation or in a dilemma of judgement, we tend to think of what has gone wrong, who is to be blamed or what justification I could find for something that did not go well or did not go as it should! The Word instructs us today - look back to the good things, magnificent things, unbelievable things that God has done - whether in person or as families or as communities. That is what the prophets did to the people whenever they had to get back to God - they reminded them of the glorious past. The Spiritual Masters too tell us that - go back to your beginnings, when you face the temptation of losing focus. The generations shall call me blessed, because the Lord has looked with favour on me... isnt that the lesson taught to us by our Blessed Mother!  

Returning to hope is sincere recognition of what we are, with all the graces we have received and all the shortcomings that we have fallen into. The recognition is of the goodness of the Lord, without doubt. But above all, it is the recognition that, that good God is with me all the time. It is the recognition of the presence of the Lord with me which is the highest of poles that can direct me to the sense of hope in life. We see Jesus today confronting the devil - what we see standing out in Jesus is certainly not a egotistic self-promotion nor an arrogance of an elitist mentality; it was a total recognition of who was with him, knowing well his own vulnerability but along with that the purposefullness of the One who had sent him. That was the root, which filled Jesus with resilience. 

Returning to hope is a manifesting the grace of resilience  in all its senses...those who believe in him will have no cause for shame, cites St. Paul. Asking the Lord today to be with us, in our distress (responsorial psalm today) is a subtle teaching that we do not desist or detest distress or hardships in life, they are bound to come. Resilience teaches us not to be caught up with the fears of failures or judgements of the rest of the people around me. It teaches us to place our trust in the right place - in the roots, that is, in the Lord who is just at a call's distance away. 

Rediscovering Hope in life, is physionomically a return, a return to the original glory and splendour; that indeed is essence of the lenten call. And this times, being the year of hope, we are called to remember the hope-giving moments that we have had with the Lord! We are called to recognise the continuing goodness of the Lord and grow in our resilience in our daily life.