On an outback farm lived Jimmy. Many times he was warned not to wander into the area where there used to be mines as he could fall into a shaft. One evening however as he was returning home he decided to take a shortcut. It was getting dark. He walked slowly through the field but he didn’t notice an opening in the ground and slipped into an old shaft. In an act of desperation he managed to get hold of a wooden beam and was left hanging over the darkness of the abyss. As the night fell he realised he was not able to get himself out of trouble. With passing time he became weaker and weaker and couldn’t stop thinking about losing the grip and falling into the bottomless shaft. After what seemed to him like ages he heard the voice of his father calling: ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’ Crying out he directed his father to the shaft. How relieved he was when the beam of light of his father’s torch filled the shaft. He expected his father to pull him up but instead his father said: ‘Jimmy, let it go.’ Shocked the boy answered: “No Dad, I will crush to death.’ Than his father pointed the torch at his own face and said: ‘Jimmy, look into my eyes. Trust me. You will be fine. Let it go.’ Looking into his father’s eyes the boy did it and … he fell ten inches. It was an unfinished, shallow shaft. However due to the darkness as he held onto the beam he imagined that there was a deep abyss under him.
            My Dear sisters and Brothers! I hope that the story of Jimmy can direct our meditation in such a way that the first reading about Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son Isaac will reveal to us his faith in God which was grounded in his filial trust in the Almighty. Many times I have heard people questioning God’s goodness as he demanded such a sacrifice from Abraham. However what God was asking of Abraham can be compared to what Jimmy’s father asked of: trust me. God knew what he was doing. God loved Isaac even more than Abraham did. God did not want to take a life away. The whole event had a purpose. We read at the beginning of the passage: ‘God put Abraham to test.’
            St Peter, who was one of the three disciples witnessing the Lord’s Transfiguration, who was also one of the same three disciples invited to keep vigil when Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, wrote in his Frist Letter: ‘through your faith, God’s power will guard you until the salvation which has been prepared is revealed at the end of time. This is a cause of great joy for you, even though you may for a short time have to bear being plagued by all sorts of trials; so that, when Jesus Christ is revealed, your faith will have been tested and proved like gold – only it is more precious than gold, which is corruptible even though it bears testing by fire.’
            Why is faith more precious than gold? Because as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews: ‘It is impossible to please God without faith.’ What pleases God so much is that by our faith in him we become also an inspiration to other people. From our faith, purified by many trials, other people draw support and encouragement. In the Scriptures Abraham is called ‘our father in the eyes of God’ because his commitment and his faithfulness to God is the school of faith for the faithful. In the same way we are called to tell the glory of the Lord by living faith when we are on the top of our lives, like the Apostles were on the Mount of Transfiguration, but also when our life is immersed in such a darkness, like Abraham when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac or the Apostles in the Gethsemane, that the only thing making sense are the words spoken by the Heavenly Father from the cloud: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ Listen, my Sisters and Brothers, to Jesus when your worries and fears tell you something different.
            Some people say that they don’t need God when things are going OK. That’s why they stay away from God. However what they miss is establishing and developing a relationship with God. The relationship based on faith and trust which are instilled in us by the Holy Spirit. When testing and tribulation come our way, like Jimmy, we can look into God’s face and see in this Holy Face the reason to let go what we may determine as important or even necessary to keep us going and happy. From the tires and testing we emerge as a gift of faith to other and as a hymn of glory to God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis Edmund, Lucy and Eustace are drawn to the Narnian world through a picture hanging on the wall. C. S. Lewis skilfully structured the story of Narnia around the Christian message. He did it so well that there has been some criticism from atheists that the Chronicles of Narnia are too Christian, and thus the books shouldn’t be promoted by schools and government agencies. I think that C. S. Lewis would be rather proud finding it out and we should embrace those stories and keep giving them to our youth to nurture their faith, and ours as well.
Let us return to the picture hanging on the wall. The picture, which drew the three children into the world of Narnia, captures the mystery of the Gospel. St Mark writing the first Gospel has given the listeners access to the person of Jesus Christ. The Gospel account, through the power of the Word of God, brings us face to face with the Son of God. Listening to the Gospel we step into the mystery of Jesus Christ in a sacramental way. Like his first followers, we, the Church, the Body of Christ, are placed within the reach of his voice and his touch. The two millennia are not separating us from his saving ministry. There is no gulf keeping us away from where Jesus ‘is at God’s right hand’.
The Good News proclaimed to us draws us into Jesus’ saving action. We are not distant observers. We are participants like John the Baptist, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve, Mary Magdalen, the thousands who were fed by the Lord in the desert, the paralytics, lepers, the blind, Zacchaeus, Lazarus and many others whom we meet in the Gospel. We are in that action too.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Gospel passage for this First Sunday of Lent shows us what happened after Jesus was baptised. St Mark tells us that ‘the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness.’ The dynamism and urgency of the Spirit is the manifestation of God’s determination to accomplish our salvation through Jesus’ ministry.
In the previous verses we saw how John the Baptist’s preaching triggered repentance in the people. They were coming to the Baptist to confess their sins and to be immersed in the Jordan River. That stream of self-confessed sinners became the moment of Jesus’ first appearance as an adult. The Incarnate God joining the queue of sinners at the Jordan promised by his presence to be with those who seek God’s mercy. He came to be baptised because there were sinners searching for God.
At the beginning of Lent 2018 we are called to examine our situation. Did we receive ashes as a sign of our contrition echoing the contrition of the people who were coming to the Baptist? If we did St Mark draws us, 40-day-Lenten-penitents, into Jesus’ 40-day-fight in the desert. The Satan, who can tempt us successfully when we are away from the Lord, will be cast out by the power of Jesus to whose fight we want to connect the temptations we face.
St Mark doesn’t explain what temptations Jesus underwent in the desert. The Evangelist leaves it to us to name our temptations and to see the Lord overcoming them in us through his profound unity with us poor sinners. The event captured in the Gospel for this Sunday and our own reality are not two separate worlds. In Jesus Christ it is one history of salvation. ‘The time has come’ said Jesus. It is not the time marked by our clocks but it is Kairos – the time of God’s intervention. ‘The kingdom of God is close at hand’ because Jesus Christ is close at hand. The length of that hand is measured by the length of our hand stretched out towards him like that of the drowning Peter.
My fellow believers, repent to Jesus and believe the Good News he is. Return often to the Lenten Gospels which draw us into the saving action which determines our today and our eternity.
Have a good Lent.

            Someone said that what people need to be happy is God curing all diseases and then leaving people alone and letting people to live as if he did not exist.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We could easily detect the happiness of the man who was healed of his leprosy. In fact St Mark tells us that after leaving Jesus the man ‘started talking about it freely and telling the story everywhere.’ We could think that the cured leper was doing Jesus a favour by spreading the word of Jesus’ miraculous powers. What a great advertisement for Christ, isn’t it? However Jesus told the man: ‘Mind you say nothing to anyone.’ As if it were not enough Jesus sent the man to show himself to the priest and to make the offering prescribed for such a healing. The healing occurred in Galilee while the priests were in the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a few-day-journey. By sending the man to the other side of the country Jesus was trying to keep him from informing others about the miracle.
If you still treasure the Gospel from last Sunday you may be able to realise that what Jesus did in the Gospel for this Sunday, I mean his persistence on keeping his miraculous powers secret, wasn’t a separated incident. Last Sunday we heard that Jesus left Capernaum after healing many people and ‘denying’ many others a chance to be cured. Was Jesus cruel or ungenerous? Or was he concerned that people could reduce him to a physician fixing the brokenness of the body while leaving out the need to have their souls healed?
The proverb: ‘a sound mind in a sound body,’ which comes from ancient times, presupposes that it is the wellbeing of the body which ensures the wellbeing of the spirit, but what Jesus has revealed to us can be summarised in a completely different proverb: ‘a sound body in a sound mind.’ That’s why Jesus kept insisting on the necessity of faith and forgiveness of sins before the healing of the body occurred. It is the soul filled with divine grace which leads to the healing of the whole person. We know that perfect physical health doesn’t prevent people from meaningless of life, selfishness, pride, inability to commit to a lasting relationship, etc. While the soul reconciled with God and graced by his Spirit radiates the peace, love, faith and hope which nothing in this world can give or substitute.
Let me finish this homily by praying once again the Responsorial Psalm. The inspired author of the Psalm verbalised the healing which lasts for ever, the healing of the soul:

‘Happy the man whose offence is forgiven, whose sin is remitted.
O happy the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no guile.
But now I have acknowledged my sins, my guilt I did not hide.
I said: ‘I will confess my offence to the Lord.’
And you, Lord have forgiven the guilt of my sin.
Rejoice, rejoice in the Lord, exult, you just.
O come, ring out your joy, all you upright of heart.’

            My Dear fellow Christians! May this ancient Psalm impart deeply in your heart. May it evangelise you with the Good News, touching you by Jesus’ Word and Sacraments deeper than the touch experienced by the leper from today’s Gospel.
            Our happiness is not in the eradication of all diseases but in living in the closeness to the Lord. We can live this closeness when we are well and when we are ill. As St Paul catechised the Corinthians: ‘Whatever you do at all, do it for the glory of God.’