1st Week of Lent 2019 - Tuesday - Gentle Rain in the Lenten Desert

With the Gospel of Jesus going out into the desert to pray and fast for forty days this Sunday, I reflected upon Lent as the Desert season of the Church year. We enter the desert, free of the distractions of modern civilization, in order to listen to the voice of God who desires to speak to our hearts, to enter into conversation with God that we miss out on when we are busy about the things of the world.

The paradox is, there is water out here in the desert, there is a gentle rain that will nourish our thirsty souls if we let it. Not a single moment of Lenten prayer is wasted time, listening to God's voice is never wasted, for God’s word, as we heard in our first reading, comes down from heaven and does not return to God void, “it does God’s will achieving the end for which he sent it”.

There is a joy in this penitential Lenten season, joy in simply soaking up the word of God in silent prayer, Lenten prayer brings joyful refreshment and new life. The watering of our souls through prayer in this desert season will make our souls fertile ground to produce good fruit for the next season of our life, but for now, it is good, simply to be watered.

Our Gospel helps us to recall the prayer that Jesus teaches us to pray, the Lord’s prayer. A powerful Lenten practice is to meditate upon the Lord’s prayer very slowly. Take the Lord’s prayer, line by line, word by word, and ponder over its meaning: the meaning the Lord wants you to understand at this point in your life, in the concrete details of your life.

What does it mean that you share in the relationship with Jesus that enables us to call upon God as “Our Father”? What does it mean that he gives you “daily bread” in all of your needs? “What does it mean that he wishes to deliver you from evil”?

We are to return to the Lord’s prayer over and over, for it is a never-ending stream of water flowing from the very heart of Jesus, and the Lord wants us to drink deeply of this water.

In your Lenten prayer, do not simply babble, like the pagans, but allow Jesus to teach you to pray, to lead you into the conversation He is having eternally with the Father, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That the season of Lent may bring the most hardened hearts to repentance and bring purification from sin and selfishness to all people.

For those preparing for baptism and the Easter sacraments, that they may continue to conform themselves to Christ through fervent prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

That we may generously respond to all those in need: the sick, the suffering, the homeless, the imprisoned, and victims of violence.

For all who have died, and for all the poor souls in purgatory, and for X. for whom this Mass is offered.

Grant, we pray, O Lord, that your people may turn to you with all their heart, so that whatever they dare to ask in fitting prayer they may receive by your mercy.