{"id":4850,"date":"2024-02-17T00:03:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-17T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/?p=4850"},"modified":"2024-02-18T13:05:40","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T13:05:40","slug":"commentary-on-1st-sunday-of-lent-b-18-02-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/commentary-on-1st-sunday-of-lent-b-18-02-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary on 1st Sunday of Lent (B), 18.02.2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Fr Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie<\/a><\/h3>\n

Mk 1:12-15<\/b><\/p>\n

The Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.\u00a0 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Like John the Baptist, Jesus preached repentance, in other words, revolution.\u00a0 The Greek word translated by ‘repentance’ is ‘metanoia’, which means literally ‘a mental revolution’, a change of mind and heart.\u00a0 The world has seen many revolutions, practically all of them violent.\u00a0 All violent revolutionaries become dictators on the day after the revolution, claiming to be safeguarding the revolution.\u00a0 Bitter experience shows us that the revolution serves the dictatorship, not the other way around.\u00a0 The seizing of power becomes an end in itself, rather than a means.\u00a0 Jesus’ revolution was of a different order.\u00a0 He refused the way of power: “put down your sword,” he told Peter.<\/p>\n

Jesus was first in the desert, where he confronted the wild beasts and the demons.\u00a0 It was an example to all revolutionaries.\u00a0 They should first go into the desert of themselves and face their demons there; otherwise they will project them onto other people and try to destroy them by destroying people.\u00a0 Revolutions, like charity, should begin at home.\u00a0 Reformers should first reform themselves.\u00a0 The axe is laid to the root of the tree, said John the Baptist \u2013 my<\/em> tree, not someone else’s; my<\/em> ego, not other people’s.<\/p>\n

Revolutions are nearly always against<\/em> something or someone.\u00a0 That way, they draw on the energy of hatred, which is more easily accessible than the energy of love.\u00a0 But we do not become good by fighting evil (we would soon find ourselves using the same means as the enemy); we become good by doing good.\u00a0 Jesus did not say, Repent and destroy the class of people who are bad news.\u00a0 He said, “Repent, and believe the good news.”
\nA revolution of love appears soft and ineffectual beside the other kind.\u00a0 But love is stronger than death.\u00a0 St Paul could write, “We are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered\u2026. In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.\u00a0 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:36-39).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary by Fr Donagh O\u2019Shea OP, www.goodnews.ie Mk 1:12-15 The Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness.\u00a0 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2289,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4850"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8115,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4850\/revisions\/8115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stmarys-tallaght.ie\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}