Lectionary Devotions by Father Gethin

“This is my body, given, this is my blood shed, for you.” In this way He fulfills the Father’s goodness, and reveals the meaning of His Passion: it is not merely a murderous scheme, perpetrated upon the innocent, patiently suffered; it is His free gift of himself, precisely in spite of the violence, because of His love for us.

Jesus is indeed healer, and teacher, and the very image of heaven, but He is more than these: He is truly, utterly, and profoundly, with us. He is the teacher who also has pity and compassion, and who provides for the life of His disciples out of His own substance.

This Sunday, as we witness the power of our Saviour over the demons, as we watch the ‘stronger man’ come and proclaim the Kingdom of God with a divine might and authority, our sense of conviction, our Christian calling to ‘draw near to God,’ also receives a new and clearer focus.

The Gospel for this Sunday is certainly one of the most controversial moments in our Lord’s earthly ministry; voices clamour to point out His heartlessness, His prejudice, and no doubt His lack of political correctness. But what about the story itself, and what might it have to teach us on our Lenten way?

“Rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful,” we read from the prophet Joel in the Penitential Rite on Ash Wednesday.

The fast of Lent is like a doorway, leading us out from our natural and material preoccupations, into a landscape that is spiritual and supernatural, so that we may find there our true heart’s desire, the love of our life, and the fulfillment of all our hope: the God-man Jesus…

It is Christ Whom we shall find when we enter the Lenten wilderness, when we depart from the rush and noise of the fallen city, to ‘come apart to a desert place, and find our refreshment there awhile.’

Between our vision of the Messiah in the Epiphany season, and the spiritual pilgrimage of Lent, we find the peculiar ‘trinity’ of weeks ending in ‘-gesima’.

The first crucial discovery we must each make in the course of our salvation is that it does indeed involve a real person: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary and Joseph.

As we make our way through the Epiphany season, we are drawn into an ever-sharpening vision of the person of our Saviour, Christ the Lord, and in the course of that progress we also come to a clearer knowledge of our own life and identity as His disciples.