General. Today’s Liturgy reminds us of the saving power of Jesus only if we recognise our sins and make repentance for them. This could be done, especially during this Lenten season, by fasting, praying and almsgiving, which together purify us to celebrate the Paschal Triduum and the Paschal Feast which is now fast approaching.

Exodus. God of Mercy calls upon Moses to announce the deliverance of His chosen people from under the Pharoah’s clutches. God’s holy name is ‘I am who I am’, a name frequently uttered in various forms (mainly ‘I am him’) by Jesus in the New Testament. Yet essentially our God is a living God of living persons (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) whom He knows from all eternity and whose individual story, including ours, He has engraved on the palm of His hand. For sure, He is a God of Mercy Who recognizes the plight in which humanity and individual persons find themselves in, and He saves. The Easter event of the Resurrection is a repeat story of the deliverance of the suffering Jewish people from the Pharoah who represents modern day money, work and comfort to which Christians, notwithstanding their Baptism, may still succumb.

First Epistle to the Corinthians. Let him who thinks himself to be standing high, think twice that he might not fall as did those who saw God’s wonders wrought with them yet still followed devious paths and grumbled in a most unthankful manner. To show what God had done with those persons, St Paul gives a short recount of the desert years they spent before entering the Promised Land, as seen from a Christian perspective. This Sunday shows how important it is for the faithful to understand the Easter event in the context of the first Paschal event accomplished by God with the Jews.

St Luke. Jesus warns twice here that unless one repents, eternal loss follows. This loss can be sudden and communal, as in the Gospel reading, but God shows great mercy and gives ample signs before passing on to mete divine justice. Church history is brimful of stories of hardened sinners who repent and follow God’s ways in the last days of their earthly life. Repentance is also required of such Christians who think themselves to be justified in the eyes of the Lord and so never delve deep down within themselves to see what their real relationship with sin is. Lent is a time when to start afresh even in one’s realisation that one is a hardened, even if unnoticed, sinner.

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