Like Jesus, are we capable of and open to emptying ourselves?

Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor.

By Father Perry D. Leiker, pastor

“Looking Ahead” is a reflection on the Sunday readings, for the First Sunday of Lent, by Father Perry.

Let us begin with sin.

Yes, the primordial sin — the one that we say “goes back to our beginnings” as recorded in the second story of creation in Genesis.

The story goes to the roots of sin; we think we are like gods or like the God.

Now that is some fruit and some tree!

Imagine: to be like, equal to, in competition with, able to stand up to and reckon with God!

Imagine that!

Again, it brings us back to the primordial sin — or the original sin.

We are NOT gods

We have been wonderfully made in God’s image and likeness; therefore, we have something very special and wonderful within us, which we often forget.

Instead of letting God’s grace and spirit and love flow through us and within us, we seek to be what we cannot be and fail to live out our human nature in its fullness.

We have been wonderfully made in God’s image and likeness; therefore, we have something very special and wonderful within us, which we often forget.

It has fallen! It is broken!

Jesus, in naked humanness, goes out into the desert and is tempted.

Because Jesus’ Spirit and God’s Spirit were truly and divinely one, he was able to empty himself and be weak, naked, thirsty, hungry and completely open — tempted in that inner space!

In that place of total emptiness and vulnerability, his spirit was aligned perfectly and wholly with God the Father.

Can Lent offer us something of the same? Are we capable of and open to emptying ourselves?

Whatever special sacrifices we make this Lent, will they help us to become more human and more divine? Will we enter into the death of Jesus so that we can also experience his resurrection and new life?

Let us do Lent so we can do Easter and be renewed as disciples of Jesus Christ!

“It was love that motivated His self-emptying, that led Him to become a little lower than angels, to be subject to parents, to bow His head beneath the Baptist’s hands, to endure the weakness of the flesh, and to submit to death even upon the cross.” — Bernard of Clairvaux.

Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com. Follow Father Perry on Twitter: @MrDeano76.