The message of the gospel of this Sunday brings us back at the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus being driven in the desert after his baptism during which the Spirit descended upon him in a form of a dove calls us to focusing on this event. The same Spirit who dwelt on Jesus, in today's Gospel, drives Jesus and takes him into the wilderness. There he stays 40 days while being tempted by Satan. This message is very meaningful to us. Jesus’ trip into the desert may be likened to his pilgrimage into his Israelite ancestors’ journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The wilderness, in the Bible, is a place of self-discovery in truth before people and before God. The experience of the desert demands endurance, hoping against hope, surrendering to providence and having an unshakable conviction. Based on the history of the Israelites who traveled in the wilderness for 40 years towards the Promised Land, the wilderness was a place of testing of perversion, a place of sanctification and a place to taste the goodness, love and mercy of God. While in the wilderness God showed His great love for protecting, guiding and providing the Israelites with food; the Spirit of the Father God took Jesus into the desert to manifest the Father’s oneness with the Son and the Son’s power over Satan.

Jesus demonstrates that He is truly the son of God by overcoming those temptations. The desert is also a place of covenant. The first reading describes the covenant God made with Noah after the great flood. A covenant, in simple terms is an alliance or agreement that binds the two parties agreeing to it. In the Bible we see God often making covenants with His people. He has set with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, set with the entire nation of Israel on Mount Sinai and eventually through Christ he has concluded the New and Eternal Covenant. All of those times that God has entered himself into covenant with people, He sets it up not for His benefit but rather for the benefits of the people. The covenant he kept with Noah was that he would no longer destroy the world by the flood as He did during Noah's time. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, God made a new covenant to make us his adopted children.

Evangelist Mark continues to show us that after those 40 days in the wilderness Jesus began to preach. And his first sermon called for repentance: "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel". It is good to see that this Gospel shows us what we are also experiencing in Lent. We keep Lent for 40 days that are a period in which spiritually we go into the wilderness for the same purpose of doing repentance and trusting the gospel in accordance to the message of Christ.

Our own lives’ stories are like a journey in the wilderness. Jesus’ temptations did not limit themselves to the forty days in the desert but he continued experiencing them throughout his life in the world and till now in the bodies of his faithful ones. However, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son is present in us and empowers us to defeat Satan in his tricks and empty promises. For Christ suffered because of our sins and for the benefits of sinners- then died, Christ descended into hell to save the souls that dwelt in prison; Christ rose from the dead and ascended into the glory of the Father. Noah's ark that saved the people and the flood are an example of baptism. Just as in Baptism, we come to believe in Jesus Christ and submit ourselves to the water of Baptism so that we may have eternal life. Let us, therefore, respond to the call of Christ to repent and believe in the Gospel so that our journey through the desert of life we may remain in the Ark of the New Covenant.