First Sunday of Lent

The First Reading on the First Sunday of Lent this year relates God’s establishment of his covenant with Noah and with us. God assures us of his fidelity through the rainbow. The story of the flood and the covenant sets the tone of Lent as a baptismal season when we pray for those soon to be baptized. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy reminds us that “more use is to be made of the baptismal features which are part of the Lenten liturgy” (art. 109). The Second Reading reemphasizes this when Peter writes that the flood “prefigured baptism, which saves you now.” On the day of our baptism God made a covenant with us personally—that we would be his dear one and that God would be ever faithful, never being left to fend for ourselves in time of disaster.