1st Sunday of Lent Year B - 26/2/2012 - Gospel: Mk 1, 12-15
Bread of life
Repent and believe in the Good News are the two separate entities and can't be separated. Repent without believe or believe without repent both are paying lip service to the Lord.  Lent becomes the bread of life for our souls when repent and believe they go together. It is abandoning the old life style and adopting a new one. It is a changing or restructuring our way of life based on the teaching of Jesus and it all begins with repent and believe.

Without repentance there will be no change and where there is no change there will be no Good News. Repentance is the very first step to welcoming the Good News. It is no good making excuses that to be human means to err. We are all imperfect but it does not mean that there is no room for improvement. As Christian we are supposed to enrich our lives based on God's love for us and that enables us to do works of charity. We need to recognize that we make no progress towards holiness by our own efforts. We need God's grace to make us be a better person because God's grace helps us to be humbled, to learn mistakes of the pass and to grow. True wisdom is derived from mistakes of the pass. Hopefully it will help us avoid making the same mistakes in the future. It is a process of growing to holiness.

Repentance is not simply a feeling of sorrow for doing wrong or the hurt and harm done for ourselves and for others. True repentance requires a firm commitment to change and without a firm commitment to change repentance does not last long. We soon fall back to the way we used to live. The longer we dwell on the old way the harder it is for us to make a change.

We need to repent and not delay for two reasons. First, Jesus has announced that the kingdom of God is close at hand. It is so near and close. It is available at hand and there is no need to delay. Second, the new way is better than the old one and wisdom teaches us to choose for the better. When a person refuses to choose for the better that person might act on the intelligent of the world, not the wisdom of our faith.

Repent and believe. What is to believe? It is the belief that God's love is stronger than our imperfection and those who place their faith in God will participate in the Holy life of God. It makes us holy and becomes a new creation in Christ. We become holy because we participate into the life of God.

Repentance begins with us but new life begins with God and is sustained by God. A successful person is not the one who has great knowledge about God's love and his creation but must be the one who loves God and opens himself to welcome God's grace into his life because

Man does not live by bread alone but by the words of God. Mat 4,4.


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