First Sunday of Lent
Sunday, February 22, 2026
St. James Cathedral

My friends, each year we begin our Lenten journey by going into the desert with Jesus. Matthew tells us that it is the Spirit who leads Jesus into that place of fasting and hunger to be tempted by the devil.
 
That same Spirit is with us this day leading us into our forty day journey of Lent. It is that same Spirit who accompanies the Catechumens of our Parish Family, who were elected this week for the Easter sacraments, and all of the baptized, on this journey to the waters of re-birth.
 
This is our special time each year to reassess what’s important to us and who is important to us. It is the time given us, in preparation for Easter, to get clear about where our loyalties lie.
 
The Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are taken on as tools for clearing away what’s unimportant in our lives and to re-focus us on our relationship with God. These practices help us to name where our loyalties are divided or misplaced, and allow us to refocus on the only loyalty that really matters – our loyalty as beloved sons and daughters of God.
 
Lent is our privileged time when we intentionally go into those desert places of our hearts to confront whatever might be there that’s getting in the way of our relationship with God. It is an opportunity for us to face our brokenness, our sin, head on and then to trust the overwhelming mercy and love of God. And lest we think that our struggle against sin is a private affair, the story of the fall in the Book of Genesis reminds us of the ripple effect of giving in to temptation.
 
There is profound truth in this story of the first humans. And it is not just a story about something that happened once upon a time. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and the story of our ancestors’ fall is our story as well. The story is about a shift in loyalties – a shift from a God-centered life to a me-centered life. 
 
It is a description of what happens to us when we fail to live in right relationship with God. It is a description of what happens when living as beloved daughters and sons of God is not enough and we grasp at other ways to define ourselves.
 
So much in our lives competes for that self-definition. Wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, living in the right neighborhood, having the right friends, going to the right school, being part of the right political party, and having the right amount of money are just some of the ways that our culture tells us that we are defined. And that which defines us, gives us our identity, and that’s where our loyalty lies.
 
Jesus is our model for undivided loyalty to God. Jesus, the one identified at his baptism as God’s beloved, re-asserts and confirms the relationship God intended from the creation of the first humans. In the midst of the devil’s tempting Jesus is able to be clear about who he is whose he is.
 
In the self-denial of his fasting in the desert he is able to put aside the self-absorption that could have led him to turn stones into bread. In his trust in God as his Father he is able to turn away from any desire to test God’s care for him. In Jesus’ undivided love of God, not even the temptations of the Evil One himself can entice him to shift loyalties and worship anything or anyone other than his Father.
 
Such undivided loyalties, such undivided hearts, are what we seek during this season of self-denial. We don’t take on the practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving as some kind of spiritual calisthenics. We spend more focused time in prayer so that we might refocus our lives around God. We fast so that our emptiness may help us to hunger for God. We give alms so that we might break out of a me-centered life - so encouraged by our culture and politics today - and live more intentionally an other-centered, a God-centered life.
 
The Good News is that Jesus has already made such a life possible for us. That is what Saint Paul’s point is in today’s second reading. Paul is not primarily interested in sin and death, but in two men - Adam and Jesus. The world was changed by each of them.
 
Adam was not loyal to the God in whose image he was made, and the world was changed. But Jesus proves to be the Beloved Son with whom the Father is well pleased. And in his obedience, in his loyalty, the world is changed again and life is restored to all of us.
 
So, may this season be a holy season of self-denial for us. May the self-absorption, and the self-centeredness that can so tempt us, be replaced by other-centeredness and God-centeredness.
 
May all of us, catechumens and the baptized alike, know the nearness of the Spirit of God who leads us on this forty day journey to the glory of Easter and the waters of rebirth. May we arrive at those waters with hearts less divided and more clear than ever about who we are and whose we are: beloved daughters and sons of God.

Father Gary F. Lazzeroni