Turning towards the Paschal Mystery: a homily for the Fourth Sunday before Lent

‘Of first importance’: turning towards the Paschal Mystery

At the early Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday before Lent, 2022

I Corinthians 15:1-11

The season of Lent is approaching. 

This Fourth Sunday before Lent begins a series of weeks in which we ready ourselves to enter into Lent.

The liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, tells us that we are called to mark Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word”.

It is right, then, that we ready ourselves, that we give time during these weeks to think about how we will observe Lent.

But why? Why these Sundays before Lent, heralding the approach of the season? Why have forty days in the Spring of each year marked by prayer and abstinence, self-examination and the reading of Scripture? 

The answer is found in today’s Epistle reading, Saint Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures”.

The Cross, death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus are the events of “first importance” for the Christian Faith.  

It is faith in these events which defines what it is to be a Christian.  

It is these events which are at the heart of the Creed we confess week by week, the events in which we sacramentally participate through our Baptism and through the Eucharist.

The events, as Saint Paul says in our reading, “through which you are being saved” - that is, healed, restored, forgiven, reconciled, renewed.

Each year at Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter Day, the Church celebrates the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord. 

And each year, these celebrations are preceded by the forty days of Lent, so that through prayer and abstinence, self-examination and the reading of Scripture we are prepared to enter afresh into these mysteries; prepared to be touched afresh by them in heart, mind, and soul; prepared to rediscover why they are “first importance” to the Christian Faith.

These Sundays before Lent tell us that we are approaching that time of preparation, the season of Lent, the forty days which prepare us to encounter again the events “of first importance”.

These Sundays turn us towards the Cross and empty Tomb, the saving mysteries which define who we are as Christians, and what it is to live by faith in the Crucified and Risen One. 

Let us then use these weeks before Lent wisely, reflecting on how we will observe the forty days of Lent as a preparation for entering afresh into the celebration of the events at the heart of our faith, a preparation that will renew our faith in, and living out of, the mystery of the Lord’s Cross and Resurrection.