As this issue of The Messenger goes to press, we as members of the Catholic Church linked to others around the world, are just beginning our Lenten journeys. The ashes were distributed to the faithful and we are, in these cold days of winter, beginning to turn inward and reflect on whether our daily lives mirror the lessons of the Gospel.

The liturgy places the story of the transfiguration of Jesus on the Second Sunday of the Lenten season, perhaps as a beacon of hope for Christians undergoing the rigors of Lenten fasting, abstinence, and other penitential works imposed by Church authority. The transfiguration is a preview of Jesus’ resurrection.

The gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent is the story of the temptation of Jesus. That Jesus was tempted in his human nature is a tradition embedded in all four Gospels and in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews.