Lent comes as the year turns from Winter to Spring, as the soil is turned to receive the seed, as the migratory birds turn to make their long journey back from warmer lands.

Lent calls us to a metonia , a conversion, a turning around to see old familiar things in a new way:

Show to me during these Lenten days

How to take the daily things of life
And by submerging them in the sacred,
To infuse them with a great love
For you, O God, and for others.

Guide me to perform simple acts of love and prayer,
The real works of reform and renewal
Of this overture to the spring of the Spirit

(“Lenten Psalm of Awakening,” Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim , p. 136).  

The readings for the first Sunday of Lent invite us to this turning. The first reading shows how our Jewish ancestors turned from old ways to journey in answer to God's call. That call, as the second reading points out, is a call to go deeper into the word that is always “on your lips and in your heart.”

In the Gospel, Jesus follows the “overture to the spring of the Spirit” by turning to the desert as a place to learn how to answer God's call at the beginning of his ministry. Like him in our journey to God we too can experience temptation. The three temptations of Jesus can be summed up in today's terminology as 1. Consumerism ; 2. Power; 3. Desire for inappropriate attention.

So at this time of Lent let us pray to Jesus for help in turning back to God in particular from these temptations that are so much part of our world:

• Jesus, help us during Lent to turn even a little from the consumerist mentality we are all so steeped in to the realisation that “we do not live on bread alone.”

• Jesus, we know that none of us are free deep down of the desire to lord it over others in power. Help us to turn back to God and “serve him alone” which in turn will enable us to have a great respect for our sisters and brothers.

• Jesus, the Church as a whole has painfully experienced in the past couple of years that our way of operating has often put “God to the test.” Help us to turn around and show God's face in the world by the service we give to one another.