Renewal and Remembrance in Lent

Teaching & Preaching: Deacon Matt's homilies & podcasts

Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent (Year C), preached March 9, 2025.

Those of us who are already baptized don’t need to be baptized again, but we do need to remember what our baptism means for us, to renew our rejection of Satan and all his empty promises and to rejoice in what Christ has accomplished for us through his passion, death and resurrection — what we call the Paschal Mystery. We need to remember these things.

The scripture scholar Dr. John Bergsma says that, “one of the enemies of the spiritual life is forgetfulness. We forget what God has done for us,” he says. “We forget who we are, what we have experienced as God’s people, where we come from, and where we are going. As they say,” he continues, “those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Applied to the spiritual life,” he says, “that means those who forget the bondage God has saved them from will slide back into that bondage.”