First Sunday of Lent Deut 26: 4-10; Rm 10:8-13; Lk 4:1-13 (Year C) On Ash Wednesday, at the blessing and imposition of Ashes, we were called to our Lenten journey: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” Pope Francis, announcing the Jubilee year, has given this Lent a particularly personal dimension. This Lent, he points out, should be lived more intensely as a privileged moment to celebrate and experience God’s mercy, the opportunity to rediscover for ourselves the merciful face of the Father. Repentance, a fundamental attitude that resolves to turn from sin and trust in the Lord, places us at the very heart of the Father’s mercy. At the beginning of Lent it is useful to begin with an honest review of our lives. We can begin in a very broad way, asking ourselves questions such as: where has life brought me, and where do I want it to take me? It is important that we ask ourselves such questions within the context of prayer. In very broad terms Moses put the same question to the tribes of Israel as they settled into the land. He pointed out that they had come from a long period of wandering with no place that they could call their home. They had endured the privations of slavery in Egypt, the joy of deliverance and the deprivation of the wilderness. This was their past, and in the light of their past, Moses now invited them to embrace the merciful God who had brought them thus far. As we enter Lent we also look back and acknowledge the times when we have wandered far from God’s ways, times when we have entrusted ourselves to sin’s selfish enslavement, times when we have glimpsed the offer of God’s mercy. Now it is time to find our home with the Father. Lent invites us to recognise and embrace this moment of mercy. “Oh that today you would listen to his voice. Harden not your hearts.” For those who have tried and failed in the past, hesitation is all too understandable. Here St Luke’s account of the temptations brings reassurance. “Filed with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there.” If we are to follow Jesus, we must be allowed space in prayer to be led by the same Holy Spirit, led into a humble acceptance of where the past has led us astray, and, more importantly, longing for the Spirit to bring us home to the Father’s mercy. It is with and in the Spirit of Christ that we shall overcome temptations that have so often triumphed in the past.