A (0:01)

Welcome to Unpacking the Mass with Keith Nestor. On this podcast, we dig into the week's readings for the upcoming Sunday for the Catholic Church so that when you go to Mass, you are ready to hear what God has to say to you through the Scriptures. So grab your Bibles and let's get digging. Hey, friends. Welcome to Unpacking the Mass. This week, we begin Lent. The first Sunday in Lent. Of course, Lent is a time that is so important to us because it's a time of preparation. It's a time of repentance and a recalibration of the recognition that we need God's mercy and we are given some tools to get there. Not that we need to do anything to earn God's mercy. Otherwise it wouldn't be mercy, but the cooperation with that mercy, the recognition of that mercy, and the acceptance of that mercy. Mercy is like this incredible gift that we've been given by God, but it's a gift that we have to accept. And I think you know what I mean, because there's some times when that gift is given to us and we don't accept it. Have you ever had a conflict with another person and an attempt at reconciliation was made, and maybe even the person who was the one who needed to apologize was told, hey, it's okay, you're forgiven. But they can't stop living in that shame. They can't stop pretending like they've got to make it up to you or that they have to avoid you or whatever. I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but it's frustrating when you offer someone mercy and they. They just run away from you. Imagine how the Lord feels. We've all got sin. We've all got skeletons in our closet. We've all got things that we struggle with. And Lent is a time when we enter into this season of recognition, which can sometimes. Recognition of that and repentance, which can sometimes lead to shame. And we're going to talk about that today because there's two types of shame, really. There's good shame and there's bad shame. Now, I know some people will say, well, no, there's no such thing as good shame. Call that something different, for lack of a better word. That's what we're just going to call it. And the difference between the good shame and the bad shame is very simple. The good shame draws you closer to Jesus so that you can receive mercy, whereas the bad shame drives you away from him, where you will find desperation and ultimately judgment. And that's really the key. How do you think God feels when he did so many things, offered himself on the cross for us, gives himself to us in the sacraments so that we can have that mercy, and yet we say, no, I can't do it. That's what Lent's about. You know, everybody wants to give up something for Lent. I don't know what I'm going to give up yet, honestly, in terms of a, you know, something to eat, something, whatever. But I know some things in my heart I need to give up, and that's what I think the focus really needs to be on. So let's pray, and then we'll jump into these readings. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We thank you, Lord, for your mercy. And we pray that we would be laid bare before you, knowing that you see everything inside our hearts and that you offer us mercy. Lord, help us in this season of Lent to bear fruit. Fruit of repentance, of change, of the acceptance of your love and of your mercy, that we might be walking in joy, redeemed and restored. We thank you, Lord. May this season, Lord, be the best Lent that we've ever had. We pray these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Kind of interesting concept, the best Lent ever. You don't really hear that, do you? Because when you think of Lent, it's a lot of suffering, right? But that should be our goal, shouldn't it? To have the best Lent ever. What does that look like, though? Well, I think what it should look like is this. A recognition of who we are and who God is, why we're in this mess in the first place, which we're going to get into in a minute, but also the preparation for what God is going to do throughout Holy Week, Easter, of course, and beyond. Friends, that's what we think of Lent is leading up to that. And I pray that God would invite us into a journey that will go deeper in our hearts than ever before. All right, let's look at our first reading. It comes to us from the Book of Genesis, some verses in chapter two, and then in chapter three. And again, this is how we got into this mess. All right, it reads this. Then the Lord formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord had made. He said to the woman, did God say, you shall not eat of any tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden. But God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch it, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. Our second reading comes from Romans 5, 12, 19. Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all men sinned. Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. But sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God. And the free gift in the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ abounded for many, and the free gift is not like the effect of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift, following many trespasses, brings justification. If because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. And then the Gospel today, From Matthew, chapter 4, verses 1, through 11 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. And afterward he was hungry, and the tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will give his angels charge of you on their hands. He will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, again it is written, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to them all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, begone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him. Friends, how did we get into this mess anyway? This mess of sin, this mess of a broken universe? It's because of what we saw in the first reading when Adam and Eve. You know, people like to blame Eve, but, you know, Adam participated. Of course. And the truth is, we all participate in sin. When that happened, things were broken. Things were taken out of the ideal. And yet, even in the beginning of this, God has a plan. As we see in Genesis 3:15, when God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and her offspring shall crush your head. That's a prophecy about the Blessed Virgin Mary and about Jesus. See, even from the beginning, God has a plan. And why is this important? Because you need to understand that this isn't just about some cosmic reality. This is about your life, even when you ate the apple, so to speak, of that sin. Because we are all guilty. We all participate in that. God had a plan to offer you mercy, and that's what we have to recognize, my friends. But we don't receive that plan if we don't first acknowledge the mess that we're in. So why do we need Lent every year? You might say I already did that, right? I was baptized. I went to confession because we need to be reminded every year. Because guess what? There's probably a pretty good chance that you have sinned since last Lent and still need God's mercy. God's mercy is new every morning, the Bible says, as is our need for repentance. And Lent is that time when we step into that reality and we allow ourselves to come face to face with what our sin cost us and what God has done to heal that. Adam and Eve experienced that shame, didn't they? As soon as they recognized that sin, they were aware of good and evil. I wonder what that was like. You know, we just get that one verse there that talks about that. But imagine what it was like to go from not even knowing the existence of sin to recognizing what had happened. And what was their immediate reaction? To cover up themselves, aware of their nakedness. And then of course, to run away. Remember what happened when God came looking, where are you? And Adam hid away. You can't hide from God. And then what does he do? Oh, it was the woman's fault. He makes excuses, right? See, there's good shame and there's bad shame. Bad shame causes us to cover ourselves and hide away, to turn away from God and to make excuses because we don't want to face it. But that's not what we're called to do in Lent. We're not called to just be beaten down. You know, sometimes when we're in the midst of crisis or shame or sin, there can be a tendency just to pile onto ourselves. And sometimes other people participate in that. There's a good old saying that I think is very true. You never kick a man while he's down. Same for a woman. And I know that in different times in my life, when I've been down, you know, what I've needed is a helping hand up, not a constant reminder of my failure. Maybe you can relate to that sometimes we like to do that in relationships, don't we? When one person has hurt us and they're down, we want to pile on. We want to just remind them how bad they hurt us or how bad what they did was. And I'm not talking about to get them to realize that. I'm talking about once they've realized it, because we want to inflict that punishment upon them. We want to rub their nose in it, so to speak. It's a. It's a sin in and of itself to do that, my friends. But bad shame is when you do that to yourself. Woe is me. We've seen that in the Bible, right? I'm a man of uncle. Of unclean lips. We see Isaiah saying that. Did that stop God from. From using him no, of course not. He touched a coal to his lips and said, go spit fire. Basically right, Go and declare my truth. We see Peter, when the Lord comes to him, he says, stay. Get away from me, Lord. I'm a sinful man. Do you think Jesus was surprised by that? Oh, wait, I thought you were the good guy. Never mind. Hold on. No, you see, when we're aware of that, sometimes that moment of shame can come into our hearts and God still calls out to us and says, get up. I have mercy for you. I have mercy for you. Why do we need Lent every year? Because we still need repentance, recalibration, and we need mercy. We need to recognize when we've done wrong so that we can repent. And Lent is a time of offering that penance. But we have to remember, friends, that the Lord is merciful, the Lord is merciful. When we cry out for mercy, that actually shows that we're on the right track. Now, that second reading is pretty awesome, right? God is fixing what Adam has done. That's why Jesus is called the new Adam. Remember, it said here, he's a type of the one who is to come as Jesus is the Son of man, the second Adam, as St. Paul would say, through his disobedience, sin enters the world, but Christ's righteousness redeems the world. That's powerful, isn't it, my friends? This is God's plan. God didn't say to humanity, you guys fix it. I did this, right? He said, I will fix it. Why? Because we can't fix it, friend. You can't fix it. We spend our whole lives sometimes trying to fix things that we can't fix. Now, that's different from than offering penance and trying to do what we can do. There's this interesting tension and this interesting cooperation that we have to walk into, which we'll get into that in a moment. But what we have to remember first and foremost is that this gift, mercy, is given to us by God, not because we deserved it, but because of God's love for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. That's an act of love by God, not something that we deserve. I mean, Ephesians 2 says, you know, we are saved not by works, we're saved by grace through faith. We're saved because we put our faith in what Christ has done for us. And that faith involves all of the things that lead into that. Of course. But notice that God never said, all right, I'm going to save Those who have proved it to me first. No, he offers that. Otherwise it wouldn't be a free gift. The free gift is not like the trespass. The trespass brought death. But the free gift brings life. It brings life. But just as Adam and Eve had to cooperate with the serpent in order to usher in that death, we have to cooperate with Christ to walk in that mercy. We have to receive that free gift. Now, I know people get mad at me sometimes, not you guys, of course, when I talk like this, when I say that, yes, salvation is a free gift, but you have to cooperate with it. Because some people want to live in the world where, no, this means that there's nothing that you have to do to be saved other than. And then they give a list, of course, of, you know, believe in Jesus, you know, and they say, well, because that free gift. Well, I would say this to them, well, wait a minute. Isn't believing in Jesus something? Isn't believing in Jesus doing something? You're placing your faith and trust in him. You said I don't have to do anything. But. There's a but. Well, if it's a free gift, then shouldn't it just be given to everybody? Now, I know there are some who say, yep, that's true. Everybody gets to heaven. Everybody's saved. Universalists. And you know what the truth is, at least they're consistent. They have some other problems they got to deal with. But. But they're consistent when it comes to this. But we understand what this means, friends, that just as that gift has been given, it must be received. You can give me a check for a million dollars as a gift, but if I don't open the envelope deposited in the bank, then what good is that gift done me? Nothing. You've still been the giver. I didn't earn it. You gave it. But it doesn't do me any good if I don't receive it and put it in my account. Friends, Christ wants to bring you mercy. He wants to bring you healing. This is the gift we must receive. But it's not applied to us against our will. It's applied to us with cooperation with the gift giver. Because that's about relationship. Remember, Jesus isn't just about a transaction. He's about a relationship. And a relationship is built on the giving and receiving of love. That's ultimately what a relationship is built on. Christ offers that to us, but he wants us to receive it. And that's what we mean by a relationship with God. So where does all this penance stuff come from? That Catholics are all doing here. You know, oh, we got to give up meat on Fridays, and we don't. We don't, you know, we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and, you know, we give up something special for Lent, for penance and all this kind of stuff. Why do we do all that? I mean, Jesus paid it all, right? Remember, these acts of penance have nothing to do with Jesus paying it all. They have to do what with our recognition of what our sin cost him. And just that small act of offering ourself to him as a reminder of the price he paid, but yet also as that penance in a way that we can do. You know, we can't pay back what Christ has paid us for our sin, but there can be things that we can do to alleviate some of the temporal punishment. Now, you know, we talk about the eternal punishment and the temporal punishment. The eternal punishment, of course, paid by Christ in full. You can't do anything to satisfy that. But the temporal punishments are those punishments that remain, that are the lasting consequences of our sin here on earth. And, you know, there are penalties to what we have to do. There are consequences of that sin. And that penance that we offer is a way to remit some of that by God's grace. Now, he's so merciful that there are things that he offers to us that can even remit those things. But when we offer penance, it's as if we're saying to God, hey, I know I can't pay back what you've done for me, but here's something I can do to offer myself in repentance for that. We can't save ourselves, and we'll never pay the price of our sin that we deserve when we receive the mercy of Christ. But penance allows us to remember the consequences and doing what we can, even though we can't save ourselves. Now let's look at the gospel today. I think this is an interesting concept because what happens, right, Jesus is baptized in the Jordan by John, and then he's led by the Spirit out into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Remember, God doesn't tempt Jesus. God tempts no one. But he allows these temptations to come into the life of Jesus. And just like he allows us to be tempted, but we also know from Scripture that he will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can resist. We talked about that before in unpacking the Mass. How you can you make a choice. Remember last week, you make a choice to follow God, and you can make the right choice. But we have to compare this with what happens with Jesus, with what happens with Eve, and then, of course, with what happens in ourselves. Now what does the devil do when he tempts Eve? He gets her to question what God really said. Same thing with Jesus, right? Well, did God say, you can't do this? You know, God just doesn't want you to know good and evil, right? You're gonna be wise like God. He attacks her identity, attacks her relationship with God. And it's interesting that he uses the fruit, something that she eats in the same way. Look at the temptations that are brought to Jesus. He's attacked in three different ways, right? He's attacked in his identity. If you are the son of man, right? If you are the son of God, do these things. He's attacked according to the needs of his flesh, caused these stones to become bread. And then of course, and also, you know, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world. That's a fleshly, you know, temptation. But then he also attacks his relationship with the Father when he tries to question that God will protect you. You don't have to worry about what all these things you can jump off. You do not put him to the test. Jesus says. So these are the main categories of attack that we have to be on guard for, my friends. Attacks against our identity in Christ, against our flesh and against our relationship with God. So how do we defend against these attacks? I think Jesus response in comparison to Eve's lack of response or her bad response. When we see what Jesus did, it shows us the way, of course. What does he do every single time he quotes the Bible, quotes the Old Testament, he says it is written. Now what's interesting though is Satan also quotes the Bible to him too. Have you ever noticed that he's a Bible scholar? Better than anyone that's going to walk this earth, my friend. So don't think for a second that the Bible can't be used against us at times. How many of you have ever done the whole, okay, God, speak to me, speak to me, I've got a question, I got an issue, I'm feeling condemned or I'm feeling this way. And you just randomly open the Bible and it's like, you shall die. You ever do that? I have. I'm not saying that's the devil, but I'm just saying that the Bible in and of itself, in terms of the words on the page, can be taken out of context and used against us. That's why it's so important that we understand what the Bible means and what it truly teaches, not just how someone can use it against us. The devil used the Bible against Jesus, who's the word made flesh. Don't think that it can't be used against you. So we have to know what the Bible means, not just what it can be made to say. And what's the best way to know what it means, to study it in the context of the church, to understand what the church teaches about it. Not just some guy who's got ulterior motives and wants to swindle you out of your money and is going to throw a verse at you that says if you sow a seed, then God's going to pay you back tenfold. Or not. Someone who's going to manipulate you and say to you, obey your leaders. And I'm your leader as your pastor. I knew a pastor who did that once and he threw Hebrews and says, obey your leaders. I'm in charge of you do what I say. People can use the Bible in all sorts of evil ways. That's why I'm so thankful that we have a church that Christ has given to us that can show us what it truly means, not just what it says. So make your goal, then this Lent to be fortified against those three areas of temptation, your identity, who are you, your willingness to deny yourself those attacks against the flesh. That's what fasting is going to help you defend against. And then of course, your relationship with God. And this is where that shame comes in. Because when we remember that we have been redeemed by God, then our relationship with God is not dependent on whether we're good enough, but rather if we receive his mercy. So who are you? Are you just someone trying to figure it out on your own? Or are you a son or a daughter of the living God? Are you redeemed and restored or are you condemned and cast out? Friends, you've been given that gift, so live in it this Lent, as we face our sin, as we face our need for repentance, let us do so, but without that bad shame that will drive us out of the garden and away from our Lord. No, rather, maybe we driven to the foot of the cross to say thank you, Jesus, that though my sins are like scarlet, you have washed me white as snow. That you have redeemed my soul from the pit of emptiness, that you have created in me a clean heart and renewed a right spirit within me, that you have not cast me away from your presence or taken your spirit from me, that you have restored to us the joy of your salvation. Lord, renew our spirit. That's the prayer and the cry that we need to have this Lent. And when you have that, you know, then whatever it is you give up for Lent, friends, you realize that those fleshly things are just made to help us to resist the devil. When he comes to us through these worldly ways, we cast him out. We say, look, my flesh is not the boss of me. And we recognize what he's done for us, my friends, so that you can never be taken away from him and he can never be taken away from you. So what, are you going to give up this Lent? You know, we all need to think of something individually, and that's up to you. Honestly, like I said, I still haven't figured out what I'm giving up yet in terms of the outward penance. But I think something that we need to collectively give up is self condemnation and rather instead to take on our true identity as those who have received this incredible gift of mercy. If you do that. If I do that. If we do that, we will have the best Lent ever. My friends, thanks so much for joining me here on Unpacking the Mass. Hey, if you've missed an episode, we're going to put a little card right up here. You can hop in there and catch up on past episodes. And I encourage you to make sure that you're caught up and as we move through Lent, you know, make it a point to make this part of your Lenten journey. And I think you'll be glad that you did. Thanks so much, my friends. Take care and God bless.