Sermon:
One of the most captivating natural phenomena that make us look up to the sky is undoubtedly the rainbow: it is a marvelous thing that when sunlight passes through the rain, it disperses into 7 colours of extraordinary beauty. Why does the rainbow and nature fascinate us so much? Why do we feel a certain peace of heart when we have time to connect with nature?
Undoubtedly, we are living a hurried life; no matter how much we work, it seems we can never catch up. Let's pause for a moment and think about how many times just this last week we complained to someone else or to ourselves that we can't keep up, always on the move and it seems like our to-do list keeps growing. Why is that? Why don't we have time anymore to stop, look up at the sky, at the rainbow, and marvel? Without a doubt, we are living a life that has created many more needs and demands than ever before; up to 25 years ago nobody had a mobile phone and nobody missed it, we were getting by without it, and perhaps we were better off. Now we have invented this mobile phone and it's not just an expense that you have to work for to buy, but it also takes up a lot of our precious time. Like this example, we can find many: in the past our parents were poorer, lived simpler lives with fewer needs, but I think we can agree that they were much happier than us.
The Word of God today invites us to stop and reflect a little. We can imagine Noah, coming out of the ark after the flood, and stopping to gaze in wonder at the rainbow. 'I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and every living creature of all flesh;...' Unfortunately, a flood as a punishment from God has not occurred again, but floods brought about by man's own hands, a product of his selfishness, happen often. How right Pope Francis is to call us to love and respect nature! A person who loses the ability to stop and look up at the sky and be amazed by the stars, a rainbow, sunrise... who can no longer pause and marvel at the beauty of the sea, a rose, a butterfly... undoubtedly, this person has lost something special within themselves.
This person, obsessed with how much they own or can own, is a person who has become impoverished inside, someone who may have their pockets full but their heart empty, living but not knowing why. Perhaps many of us feel this way: if this is the case, let us not lose heart, God loves us so much that He is offering us a time of grace, a time when He invites us to pause, the season of Lent. Do you believe that you need Lent? God cannot give you grace that you do not feel you need.
In today's gospel, we heard, 'The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.' This same Spirit invites you and me to experience the desert. What comes to our mind when we mention the desert is silence, and perhaps we associate this silence with peace, forgetting that silence can reveal the battles within us. We fear silence because it confronts us with ourselves, silence is an invitation to go within and face the reality that we may have neglected: yes, silence confronts us with our sin. Alone, we may not dare to embark on this journey because it scares us, perhaps that's why in life we create a thousand ways to kill the silence. But a sick person does not heal simply by denying their illness. A sick person heals if they accept their illness but also recognize that help is available; therefore, they go to the doctor and take the medicine they need. Yes, I am sick with sin and the doctor who can heal me I know who He is, none other than Jesus, and to meet Him I need to go out into the desert...
Lord Jesus, today you invite us to undertake the most difficult journey of our life, that is, to enter into our hearts and examine how our life is going. But in this journey, you do not leave us alone, You yourself want to take this journey with us. Give us, Lord, the courage needed to make this journey with you, so that we may recognize our sin and let you heal us and help us rise to continue the journey of life with you and in you. Amen.