On this first Sunday of Lent 2023 we share a reflection prepared by the Sisters Adorers, Province of America:

Lent is a necessary time to live the Paschal Mystery in depth, time enough to prepare us for the challenges, struggles, resistances and temptations that come to besiege us in our daily lives.

What gives strength to temptations is all that goes against the love of God, all that divides and separates us from the Source: wealth, glory and power. Temptations are everyday experiences, the desert tests us, but we know that in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist the desert and the temptations become the way that unites us more to God.

As we see in the Gospel that is proposed to us for this first Sunday of Lent, Jesus experienced in his life the power of temptations, led into the desert by the Spirit who accompanies him and helps him to respond to his choice.

In every day temptations walk with us, but it is up to each one of us to choose freely to consent to them or not to fall into them, finding the only point of support, which is Jesus in the Eucharist.

Mother Sacramento has also shown us the way not to consent to the insidiousness of evil in our lives when she invited us to live like her that Shemá which would give full meaning to her religious consecration: “You shall love the Lord your God in the Blessed Sacrament with all your heart (obedience), with all your soul (chastity), with all your strength (poverty) and with all your mind (not to commit deliberate venial sin and always to do what is most perfect)”.

Let us ask the Lord for the grace to live this propitious time with intensity, confident that the Spirit accompanies us on this journey, so that together and filled with hope we can celebrate the triumph of Life to the rhythm of Adoration and Liberation.