"Living with awareness and intention"
1st Sunday Lent C
Youth 2000
Knockadoon
9 March 2025
My friends,
It is increasingly challenging to live with awareness and intention.
This is our reality in this generation. Such is the all-pervasive nature of the onslaught on our senses by the web that technology has woven ‘round our experience of life. This is overwhelming for many, making coping difficult.
It’s probably something of this experience that has motivated you to avail of this retreat opportunity. It’s a blessing that you have. This time offers space to recalibrate our living through attention to our inner self from where authentic living is nurtured.
It’s important to reiterate all the while that the world remains a wonderful gift of the Creator Lord of God. Its our management of the gift that’s problematic.
I’m sure your choice of this 1st weekend of Lent is no accident as Lent is our season of renewal par excellence. It’s always so rich in possibilities for us individually and as a community of faith.
The tone is set by the Gospel of Luke – the account of the ‘desert experience’ of Jesus. Our reflection and prayer on his experience of temptation is a vital key through which we can explore our personal experience of temptation/distraction. As I said all of Gods gifts are to be treasured but it takes wisdom, prudence and fortitude to make good options in life. This is not always easy or clear.
As Jesus experienced, the lure of power, prestige and possessions is very great especially in a prosperous society like ours. This clearly is and becomes a Gospel of self-indulgence if any of these things rule our lives and ambitions. It takes living with awareness and intention to remain in control personally. Its instructive to note Jesus’ response to each temptation was to quote a piece of scripture, the Word of God, which is powerful, wise and incisive. The grace we need in such moments of personal testing flows through us with power, wisdom and insight.
It is taken for granted that we express our intent for renewal through some Lenten observance – often a sacrifice of some kind. A recent insight I got in this regard, stays with me. It was the way it was conveyed that was striking. Lent invites us not so much to surrender luxuries but our indifference. It invites us to go deeper than the surface things in life to the underlying attitude you bring to life.
To shed/surrender indifference is to embrace and give attention to what matters and who matters. It’s really a question about what you care about and who you care for? It’s a question about our desire and capacity to go outside our self and circle. It takes a sense of purpose to address these questions. Our prayer time or reflection on the Word empowers us to do so. In doing so we forge a new spirituality that speaks to our desire and wish to live and walk with the Lord. Our spirituality/synthesis is drawing from the ancient tried and tested teaching of Jesus the wisdom of God, along with the refined reflection of Church’s magisterium across the centuries.
I know you are already following this path. My words of reflection today are meant as words of encouragement to persevere, especially when tested.
The Christian life is both joyful and testing. It is increasingly difficult to live with awareness and intention – without the focus that only prayer and reflection affords us, it would be impossible. The unexamined life etc.
I pray that this time away has been fruitful and as you part from here the grace of this moment will continue to be a blessing for yourself and for those you encounter.
