1st Sunday of Lent 2022 (St. Philip the Apostle Church)

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

St. Philip the Apostle Church
Pasadena, California
March 6, 2022

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

As I was saying, I’m very happy to be with you all today for this special celebration. I’m coming every week, as you have seen, watch out! I may move here if you are not careful. If Fr. Tony welcomes me of course.

So it’s a great blessing to be with all of you today on this first Sunday of Lent, also for the celebration of your 100th anniversary. And today we have the Rite of Election here. So I’m very happy that we have the candidates that are in the process of becoming in full communion with the Church. So it is a full day, so I’m very happy to be here.

So on this great anniversary, we thank God for all his many blessings and graces during these past hundred years. We especially thank all the pastors — we have two of them here, Fr. Tony and Fr. Joe — and all priests that have been ministering here in the parish, the religious sisters, and all the ministers, volunteers, staff, and all the many families down through the years that have made this parish a special place for so many of you.

And today we especially ask the intercession of your patron, the apostle Philip, that we might be holy apostles as he was, and to work to share our love for Jesus Christ with all our hearts. So, St. Philip, pray for us!

Also I wanted to say that before we turn to our readings this morning, let us remember our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. Let us stay close to them in our prayer. We ask Our Lord to bring an end to this war, to bring about a just peace that upholds the dignity of the Ukrainian people.   

So on this first Sunday of Lent, our Gospel leads us into the desert with Jesus. Of course, as we know, during Lent we are remembering those forty days that Jesus spent in the desert after his baptism, forty days that he spent making himself stronger, through prayer and fasting, preparing for his ministry.

And Jesus allowed himself to undergo temptations, because he knew that we would. This is something that we always need to remember. There is nothing that we go through, nothing that we suffer, that Jesus has not already endured before us.

Because Jesus came to share in our humanity. He worked with human hands, he loved with a human heart; he knew what it meant to be hungry and thirsty, to be weary. He knew joy and disappointment, sorrow and pain. We see this all in the pages of the Gospels. So Jesus was just like us in every way, except in sin.

Something that we need to think about because especially to be able to relate more to Jesus Christ and understand that he’s always with us, we need to remember that his life was exactly just like ours.

We see in the Gospel today, our Lord’s beautiful humility. Out of love for us, he humbles himself and allows himself to be tempted. Just as we are.

The devil, as we just heard, makes three temptations. He tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread. He tempts him with worldly power. And he tempts him to test whether God really loves him and will protect him.

It’s very interesting to also see that Jesus responds to all the three temptations in the same way. He quotes from the words of sacred Scripture.

So it’s interesting because, as we heard, the devil today is also quoting the Bible. For each temptation, the devil tries to “justify” it with a quotation.

My brothers and sisters, I was thinking that this is how the devil works. He is always trying to twist and distort God’s words, he is always trying to turn our hearts away from God.

So in the same way that he tried to deceive Jesus, saying: “If you are the Son of God…” In the same way, the devil is always trying to get us to doubt our true identity.

We should never forget that in baptism, we are made children of God, sons and daughters of God. But we are tempted by the world to doubt that God really loves us as a Father, that he really cares for us as his children.

We should never give in to this temptation,. God’s love for you, for me is real. It is true. He “proved” his love, by dying for you on the cross. He gave his life for you, never doubt that you are special to him, that each one of us is special to him.

As I was saying before, God always goes with us. In our distress, in our struggles. He goes with us. And we can cling to him. We can call on him, and he will deliver us.

So in the three kinds of quotes from Scripture that Jesus quotes today — he gives us the right attitude to help us to live by what God is telling us in the Scriptures.

The first one Jesus uses is he tells us: “One does not live on bread alone.” And that means, my dear brothers and sisters, that our lives are more than just our material needs. Jesus teaches us today that we need our daily bread, but we also need the Word of God, we also need to have a spiritual life, a life of prayer, a life of the sacraments. So that’s the first one.

The second one, Jesus tells us: “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.” That means we are made to worship, to glorify God with our lives, to serve him with all our hearts and all our strength.

And finally, Jesus tells us: “You shall not put the Lord, your God to the test.” That reminds us again, as we have been saying, that we should never doubt God’s love for us.

I think especially during this Lenten season, it is important for all of us to read the Gospels. Spend time, little time every day — maybe five minutes — reading a chapter of the Gospels. Because there is where we can find answers to the questions that we have.

The Gospels are a beautiful reality of God talking to each one of us.  

Together with God during this Lenten season, we have this wonderful opportunity to fast and to pray and to practice deeds of mercy and tenderness.

So my dear brothers and sisters, today let us ask for the grace to overcome our temptations and  weakness and to have a holy Lent! A Lent where we spend time trying to be closer to Jesus, knowing that he’s very close to each one of us. To learn more about his life and reading the Gospels. And also trying to imitate him in our daily life, even our life for the service of God and the people of God.

 And let’s continue to give thanks to God for these 100 years. Again, St. Philip, pray for us!

And may Our Blessed Mother Mary, help us to follow the example of her Son, who shows us the way to live as a child of God in the desert of this earthly world.