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1st Sunday of Lent

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Fr. Chad VanHoose, Associate Pastor February 18, 2018

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This week I celebrated another first in my young priesthood, it's my first Ash Wednesday as a priest. Actually the first time I've ever distributed ashes as well I’d never done that before and I have to say it was a little nerve-wracking, because if you're like me you want a big dark cross on your forehead. But they don't all come out that way. In the same way I think many of us during Easter season want to feel that holy water on us during the sprinkling rite. Nobody wants to be in that back corner that doesn't get any holy water. We want to see the ashes, we want to touch the holy water and I'll tell you that the church was packed on Ash Wednesday. It's not even a holy day of obligation, yet many people have this innate desire to come to Mass on Ash Wednesday. I have a theory of why this is.
I think it's because you get something.  You actually leave mass looking physically different on Ash Wednesday and that is important to us. The physical is important. Matter actually matters. And it's because brothers and sisters that we human beings are persons who have both souls and body. This is why the physical, the material is important to us.
 I'll demonstrate this with an example from marriage, because we just had Valentine's day as well. Say you had three husbands who love their wives all equally. We have a love-ometer and you can see, yep that the love is equal between all three of these men. The first husband on Valentine's Day says, “ I love you honey.” Gives her a kiss and gives her a rose. Second husband, “I love you honey.” Gives the kiss, gives the rose.  The third husband says,  “I love you honey.” No kiss, no rose. Do you think that would fly? I’m not a married man or anything but I have to say that I think the physical would be important there, the material would be important.
And brothers and sisters, the material world has mattered since the beginning. We see it in a glimpse here today in our first reading from Genesis, with Noah and this Covenant that Noah makes with God. God initiates the covenant, yet it's not just with Noah. Did you hear this in the reading?  That God established a covenant with Noah, his descendants and with every living creature that was with him.  All the birds and the various tame and wild animals that were with him on the ark. So God covenants himself with Noah and the entire created order. All the world God makes a covenant with.  
So we see then when man breaks this Covenant, when we sin, the material world is again involved. The theologians would say that there's a four-fold alienation. A fourfold separation that is a result of the Fall. The first alienation is between man and God, it's this vertical separation. We’re now separated from God when we break the Covenant. Yet there's also this vertical alienation between man and man and woman and woman. So you have this vertical alienation as well. But there's a third and a fourth alienation that might go unnoticed.
The third is an alienation in man himself. An alienation within us. And the 4th is an alienation with creation.  I want to speak specifically to this third and fourth here this morning. The third alienation that we experience when we break the Covenant is within us.  It's that warring of our soul in our body. Maybe many of you have experienced this and have even used those words from scripture, that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh and the spirit, the soul and a body aren’t working together as they were intended and ultimately they'll be separated in death. This is a result brothers and sisters of the Fall, our breaking of God's covenant. Yet there's again this forth alienation where we’re separated with all the other created order. I think of this every time I run across the parking lot in sub-zero weather. Creation is at war with me. Think of the natural disasters that we experience, even attacks from wild animals. This brothers and sisters is ultimately a result of our breaking of God's covenant. That the material order, the material world is not as it should be. So we war against it.
But Jesus Christ came to reconcile all 4 of these alienations. He came to reconcile us back to the Father. Reconcile us back to one another, even to reconcile what has been divided within ourselves and to reconcile us back with the order of creation.  And we see this in the gospel today. That the spirit drives Jesus into the desert to be tempted by Satan. What does Mark write after this?
 Jesus was among wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. So here you have Jesus with wild beasts on the left and the angels on the right. The material, the created world and the spiritual World. Jesus stands between those two. He stands in the gap as a bridge of the material and the spiritual back to one another. Back through himself. 
And brothers and sisters we see this again in the letter of Saint Peter. Peter writes that Jesus was put to death in the flesh and then brought to life in the spirit. Jesus reconciles in himself flesh and spirit through his death and then through his resurrection. This is how he won that reconciliation. That reconciliation that brings us back in right order when 4 those areas where we have been separated. He did it with his physical self.  He had a physical body that hung on a physical cross.  The matter, the material was important. He used it to win our Redemption.
And brothers and sisters the material is still important in those sacraments and sacramentals. Think again of the ashes, the oil, the holy water, the bread and the wine that we will use here in this Mass.  The matter, the created order is still important. Jesus uses it to apply the redemption won on the cross to each of us and we actually want to touch it don't we. We want to taste that Redemption that Jesus has one for us.
First Peter again talks about this later in the reading. He brings up Noah again in the flood saying that in the days of Noah during the building of the Ark in which a few persons, 8 in all, were saved through water. The water then is that prefigurement of baptism. That Sacrament that all of us enter into the mysteries of Christ and the Ark mentioned here is a symbol then of the church. The church is  ark on which Noah was saved through the waters of baptism and through the rest of the sacraments and the sacramentals of the church.  So we want more ashes, we want more holy water, because we want to be in contact with that reconciliation from Jesus.  and here in this Mass we celebrate the sign of the New Covenant. The old Covenant of Noah has passed away and been fulfilled in Jesus in this new covenant and Jesus at the Last Supper gave his body and blood to his disciples as a sign of that new covenant.  That when we come into contact, when we consume our Lord's sacramental presence here in the Eucharist we come into contact with our Redemption and that contact changes us. Brothers and sisters as we enter into this season of Lent, this season in which we meditate on our Redemption and our reconciliation let us come into contact with those material things that we might experience our reconciliation and give our souls and our bodies back to the Lord.

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