Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent
9 March 2025
Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13
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There was a blessed and eerie feeling to our Ash Wednesday celebration in Brisbane this year. As I said to the congregation, there is nothing like a pending tropical cyclone to reinforce those words ‘Remember you are dust, and unto dust you will return’, as the ashes are applied to the forehead. We Australians are used to living in a world where the international order of rules and alliances assures our safety and security and where scientific and market advances increase our control of our environment. All of a sudden, so much seems to have been turned on its head. So much is now not under our control. So much is beyond our control. Tropical Cyclone Alfred and Cyclone Trump have thrown us off balance.
Remembering that we are dust and unto dust we will return, we affirm in faith and hope that there is, and always will be, so much in our lives and in our world that is uncontrollable. We are dependent on our loving and forgiving God.
In today’s gospel Jesus goes to the desert for that biblical number of 40 days – long enough to be sorely tested. In the first reading, Moses reminds his people that Yahweh ‘brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and bringing us into this country, he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.’ But in between were those 40 years in the wilderness when the people were tested. We now commence our 40 days of Lent when we too are tested, reminding us that our God calls us out of sinfulness into new life.
During the week I was listening to David Marr interviewing the writer Robert Dessaix who has just published a new book entitled Chameleon: a memoir of art, travel, ideas and love.[1] Dessaix is one of those writers who reminisces constantly in autobiographical mode. Marr quizzed him as to why he keeps doing this. Dessaix reflected that the older one gets, the more one changes one’s view on dying. His long time militant atheist partner has now convinced him that with ageing, it is best not to believe in any form of afterlife, and only then can one be happy; only then can one be free of the canonical dictates of others. Dessaix himself is not an atheist; he thinks that is being a bit too bossy. However Dessaix suspects his partner is right and that ‘when you say to yourself, “This is it really; it’s been special; thank you everybody; there’s not going to be anymore”, you open up a space, a big space, colourful space – space of many dimensions to be happy in. Strange but true. And I have felt for some time that those who feel that there is going to be more life, there’s going to be another life, perhaps many other lives – for these people there is often a sudden anxiety that overtakes them, whereas for me now increasingly there’s no anxiety at all.’
Dessaix believes now that life is a playground, not a journey. When younger, he enjoyed travelling to exotic places because in those places he could truly be a nobody and then start to clothe his nobodyness with exciting things, papering over his nothingness. He ascribes to the view: ‘You’ve really got to admit that you are nothing before you can start to live.’ Remember that you are dust and unto dust you will return!
Dessaix and I would not agree on many things. I do view life more as a journey than as a playground. But I thought he had a valid point for us Christians setting out on our Lenten journey. We must admit that we are nothing. But then we do not paper over that nothingness. We have no need to paper it over, acknowledging that we are called to live life to the full, being loved and forgiven by the one who enriches all who call upon him. For as Paul puts it to the Romans: ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ For us Christians facing our mortality, an infinite loving space of many dimensions opens for us when we remember that we are dust and unto dust we shall return. Our blessed and eerie feeling at the pre-cyclonic Ash Wednesday liturgy was not marked by anxiety, but by the grace of our redeemed, dependent creatureliness.
Be with us, Lord, when we are in trouble.
You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
say to the Lord, “My refuge and fortress,
my God in whom I trust.”
Be with us, Lord, when we are in trouble.
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is serving as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is Adjunct Professor of the Thomas More Law School at ACU and is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his new book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
[1] Listen at https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/robert-dessaix-s-life-reflections-chameleon/105007908
