*Short reflection for first sunday of lent 21/02/21*

Gen 9:8-15; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mk 1:12-15.

*Theme: Persevere in the journey towards salvation*

With the Ash Wednesday we began the lenten journey-40 days of our participation in the mystery of Christ, a period we are called to return back to God in intense prayer, fasting and act of charity.

In the first reading, we see God's alliance with Noah. If everything were wiped away by the flood; when hatred, violence, pride  and arrogance filled the world which God made and saw to be very good, today God who doesn't want humanity to perish intervenes and made an allliance  with Noah.

As the days of the flood were period of rebirth for Isreal, and there was an emergency of new life after the flood, so also our 40days of fast is for us a new beginning of virtues, awaken faith, renewed friendship with God and friends.

Peter takes up the theme of the flood and applied it to Baptism-As 8 persons were saved, baptiam which corresponds to this saves you. That's why Baptism is a sacramment that regenerate life.

In the Gospel,  immediately after his baptism Jesus, was led by the spirit to the desert for 40days. 40 in the scripiture means- enough or ample time, it's a preriod of preparation, of an encounter and renewal. The Israelites wandered 40yrs to be liberated, Elijah ran untonthe desert and was fed my the ravens, and Jesus fasted for 40days and was ministered to by the angels to be santified before the start of his ministry.  What is your 40 days lenten season for? We need perseverance in the journey  of our salvation. As you journey on your own desert, a place of loneliness, dry and thirty land, your place of encounter, know also in the desert the temper comes to try us.  If Jesus was tempted by the devil, we too should be prepared for temptation. It's one thing to be tempted and another thing to fall in to temptation. 

Jesus overcome temptation at the desert, then his followers can't be in such state and fall, because there Jesus will give us strength, the angels that ministered to Jesus at the desert will also stand by us not to fall.

Prayer: May the angels minsiter to us in times of temptation.  May God support us in the moments of our struggle against sin and temptation. May the victory of Jesus over sin and death be our hope in moment of temptation and trials. Amen. 

Have a spirit filled lenten season. 

Pax- peace 🙏🏾Fr Raph Jnr osj.