‘Lord, make this Lent different from the other ones’
[Homily for the First Sunday of Lent – Year A, 2026]
(Note: This audio file was recorded at home, after my homily was preached at Mass.)
A prayer from Father Henri Nouwen, the Dutch priest and spiritual writer, for the start of Lent—specifically Ash Wednesday, but still good for today:
How often have I lived through these weeks without paying much attention to penance, fasting, and prayer? How often have I missed the spiritual fruits of the season without even being aware of it? But how can I ever really celebrate Easter without observing Lent? How can I rejoice fully in your Resurrection when I have avoided participating in your death? Yes, Lord, I have to die—with you, through you, and in you—and thus become ready to recognize you when you appear to me in your Resurrection. There is so much in me that needs to die: false attachments, greed and anger, impatience and stinginess…. I see clearly now how little I have died with you, really gone your way and been faithful to it. O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again. Amen.
Probably most of us know all too well that mixture of longing and regret. We want Lent to make a difference—yet for most of us, most of the time, whatever Lenten disciplines we undertake, our tendency is to arrive at Easter not that different than we were six weeks earlier. Forty days to prepare to commemorate our Lord’s Passion and death and to celebrate his glorious Resurrection, in the words of the Easter Prefaces, “with greater joy than ever.” How do we get there? What does God want from us in these forty days?
Let’s start with a reality check: We don’t have forty days. We never have “forty days”! All we have—all any of us ever have—is one day: today. God has given us today; he hasn’t given us tomorrow. He never gives us tomorrow, except by turning it into “today.” This is why the word “today” is so important in the Bible and in the liturgy. This is why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount urges us not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow, he says, will worry about itself. Each day has enough to worry about. The Catechism says:
Time is in the Father’s hands; it is in the present that we encounter him, not yesterday nor tomorrow, but today: “O that today you would hearken to his voice! Harden not your hearts.” (CCC 2659)
Those familiar words—“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts”—will be the refrain of the Responsorial Psalm … should God give us to come to the Third Sunday of Lent!
So the question is not “What does God want from me in the next forty days?” The question, always, is: “Lord, what do you want from me today? How are you leading me right now?” The first thing God wants from each of us today is that question, from our hearts: the desire above all to be led by him, to hear his voice today.
How do we do that? Let’s look at Jesus’ example. Our Lord spends forty days of preparation in the desert. Why the desert? Why do holy men and women go to the desert? Because hearing God’s voice requires time away from the distractions and demands and clamor of ordinary life. It requires silence and stillness. And Jesus returns to that place of silence repeatedly, throughout his ministry, just as we return year after year to Lent. Pope Leo XIV, in his Message for Lent nine days ago, declared:
The Lenten journey is a welcome opportunity to heed the voice of the Lord and renew our commitment to following Christ… This year, I would first like to consider the importance of making room for the word through listening. The willingness to listen is the first way we demonstrate our desire to enter into relationship with someone.
Listening requires silence and stillness. The Christian writer Søren Kierkegaard wrote:
If I were a doctor, and if I were allowed to prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence. For even if the Word of God were proclaimed in the modern world, how could one hear it with so much noise? Therefore, create silence.
Lent is a time for creating silence, in our lives and our hearts, to hear God’s voice—not tomorrow, but today. We probably can’t go into the desert, but every Ash Wednesday the Gospel reminds us again of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount regarding the three penitential practices of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer—including Jesus’ advice to pray in your room with the door shut. If he were preaching today, I’m pretty sure he might say: When you pray, go into your room, shut the door … and turn off your mobile devices! If your smartphone causes you to sin, turn it off and throw it away! Even if you use prayer apps, use airplane or do-not-disturb mode so you aren’t distracted by alerts and texts. That’s no way to pray! If we want to hear God’s voice today, we need to create true silence, in our lives and our hearts, so that we can listen with our undivided attention.
Prayer, fasting, almsgiving: all necessary, even inseparable. Hear the words of Saint Peter Chrysologus:
These three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer, almsgiving is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them.… If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy [to the poor]; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others.… If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry.
We can’t listen for God’s voice without also hearing the cries of our brothers and sisters—and there’s no better occasion for encountering God than in coming to the aid of others. Pope Leo’s Lenten message continues:
In revealing himself to Moses in the burning bush, God himself teaches us that listening is one of his defining characteristics: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry” (Ex 3:7). Hearing the cry of the oppressed is the beginning of a story of liberation in which the Lord calls Moses, sending him to … his children who have been reduced to slavery.
In the midst of the many voices present in our personal lives and in society, Sacred Scripture helps us to recognize and respond to the cry of those who are anguished and suffering. … we must allow God to teach us how to listen as he does. We must recognize that “the condition of the poor is a cry that, throughout human history, constantly challenges our lives, societies, political and economic systems, and, not least, the Church.”
In our day, Pope Leo, and our pastors, the bishops here in the United States, have been particularly concerned about the cry of immigrants, documented and otherwise. Pope Leo affirms that nations have the right to control their borders while also expressing great concern about the treatment of immigrants, particularly those he says have “lived good lives—many of them for 10, 15, 20 years” in this country.
On Ash Wednesday, thankfully, our archbishop Cardinal Tobin was able to celebrate Mass for women detained at an ICE facility in Newark. This past week we learned that many more such facilities are planned, doubling the current detention capacity—something that should “challenge the conscience of every American,” in the words of Bishop Brendan Cahill, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration.
The temptations that Jesus faced in the desert, that our first parents faced in the Garden, are still with us: to be controlled by our appetites; to seek to gratify our egos; to pursue worldly power by any means necessary. Fasting calls us not to be mastered by our appetites and desires, to remember that we have deeper needs. Almsgiving calls us out of ourselves to active concern for the needs of others, especially the most vulnerable. Prayer gives life to our fasting and almsgiving while also being nourished by them.
We need silence to hear God’s voice. It takes time, but it always starts today. God has only given us today. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. What do you want from me today, Lord? Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Amen.
Excellent!!
Thank you for this