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The Catholic Telegraph
March 10, 2000The Church’s liturgy offers us three basic and recurrent themes or agenda items during the season of Lent. Lent is, first of all, a time of final preparation for those who will be baptized at the Easter Vigil. It is also a time of repentance and re-focusing for those who have already been baptized, a call for them to renew their baptismal fervor. Finally, it is a season for getting ready to celebrate once more the central events of the mission of Jesus: His suffering, death, and resurrection. Baptism, repentance, Christ’s death and resurrection: that’s what Lent is all about.
In the liturgical readings for this season, the gospels highlight various aspects of these three themes. The Old Testament readings have not been chosen to complement the gospels, as is the case for the rest of the year, but rather to provide a more or less independent survey of the history of salvation, a review of the interventions of God in human history that led up to redemption in Christ. The readings from the letters of the apostles, the Introduction to the Lectionary (no. 97) tells us, "have been selected to fit" the other readings "and, to the extent possible, to provide a connection between them." However, while our live letters are intended to straddle or link the other two readings during Lent, they sometimes have a way of inclining more to one of them than to the other. Our reading for this Sunday, for example, is more closely connected (via the allusion to Noah and the flood) with the Old Testament reading than with the gospel.
The first letter of Peter was written in Rome by Peter or one of his followers and is intended to offer encouragement to Christians in distant provinces of the Roman Empire who were finding difficulty in the profession of their faith. Most scholars look on it as a baptismal sermon cast in letter form. (The Church reads at greater length from First Peter on the Sundays after Easter in Year A.)
In the section we read today, the author is calling on his listeners to find encouragement in the risen life of Christ which they share. He is apparently quoting and commenting on an early formula for the profession of faith.
This profession of faith seems to have proclaimed Jesus as the one whose unique suffering and death put sinners back in touch with God. His life continued in the Holy Spirit. He proclaimed His triumph over sin to "the spirits in prison," and took His place in heaven to rule over the angels. Jesus’ ministry was a cosmic event.
"The spirits in prison" is thought to be a reference to the wicked angels who had relations with earthly women (cf. Genesis 6.1 ff.) and whose sinfulness led God to send the great flood. Jews of the first century seemed to have looked on these fallen angels as the origin and source of heathenism. Christ’s "preaching" to them was to announce their final defeat, the ultimate annihilation of their power.
The author uses the connection with Noah to speak of baptism. Noah and the few others chosen by God were saved by the water that kept the ark afloat. Likewise, Christians are saved by the water of baptism, which is not a means of ordinary cleanliness but a bath that offers believers the opportunity to live without sin through their association with the triumphant risen Christ.
This is a difficult and complex Scripture passage, but several things are clear. In the general context of the letter, the author is calling on his readers to live nobly and courageously. Here he invites them to take confidence in the awareness that they have been delivered from evil as Noah was, that their deliverance comes through the cosmic triumph of Christ, and that this deliverance calls on them to serve God with a clear conscience, without sin. This reading, therefore, deals with the basic lenten themes of baptism and detachment from sin.
There is no power in creation that can separate us from God. Whatever the powers of evil may be, we have been delivered from them through the baptismal washing that unites us to the risen Christ. Our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities are now secondary because we live in the Christ Who overcame the primeval forces of evil and Who now reigns in heaven. We are called to be aware of what Christ has done for us, to take courage in it, and to live in accordance with what He has made us to be.
Traditionally Catholics have the practice of "doing something for Lent." It may be denying ourselves some minor pleasures or giving more attention to prayer or reaching out more energetically to those in various kinds of need. This is all well and good. But the real essence of Lent for those of us who are already baptized is a renewal of heart, a re-focusing on the basic meaning and implications of our existence in the Lord. This Sunday’s reading offers us some basics to reflect on.
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Conversation Questions
How do I see Christ as deliverer in my life?
How does being baptized make me courageous?
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