8 February 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:32
Today the fast begins, and our Church opens it not with food rules but with forgiveness. In Shubkono, the service of reconciliation, the priest bows before the people and asks their pardon, and the faithful ask pardon of one another before they begin the forty days together. Paul gives the words for it: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil… Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” A fast kept with an unforgiving heart is only hunger.
The first reading of the Fast is about Abram's faith. Childless and old, he hears: “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” God brings him outside: “Look toward heaven and count the stars… So shall your descendants be.” And “he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” The Gospel shows Jesus in the wilderness, fasting forty days and forty nights and answering the tempter three times from the Scriptures: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This is the shape of our Fast: trust like Abram, peace with one another, and the word of God as our food. St John Chrysostom asks: do you fast? Then show it by your works; let not only the mouth fast, but also the eye, the ear, the hands and the feet (in substance).
Theme: “Forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
The Great Fast opens with faith, forgiveness and the word of God.
“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”” Genesis 15:1
“For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”” Romans 4:3
Apply: Bring one fear to God in prayer each day of this first week.
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:18
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,” Ephesians 4:26
Apply: Make peace with one person before sunset today.
“He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Deuteronomy 8:3
“But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”” Matthew 4:4
Apply: Read one Gospel chapter every day of the Fast.
The Fast begins with trust in God's promise and peace with one another.
Jesus has gone before us into the wilderness and overcome.
Take-home resolution: Keep the Fast with a forgiving heart and a daily portion of Scripture.
Dear friends, today the Great Fast begins, and our Church opens it with Shubkono, asking forgiveness of one another. Paul says: be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you (Ephesians 4:32).
Abram, old and childless, is told: look toward heaven and count the stars; so shall your descendants be. He believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:5–6). The Fast begins with faith.
Jesus fasts forty days in the wilderness and answers the tempter: one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).
So let us begin: trusting like Abram, forgiving one another as we did at Shubkono, and feeding each day on God's word. A fast without love is only hunger; a fast with love becomes a road to Easter. Amen.
Children, today the Great Fast begins! Before we give up sweets or meat, Jesus asks us to say sorry and forgive. Is there someone you can hug and say sorry to today?
Lord Jesus, you fasted forty days in the wilderness and overcame the tempter by the word of God. As we begin the Great Fast, take away all bitterness, anger and malice from our hearts. Make us kind, tenderhearted and forgiving, as the Father has forgiven us in you, and give us the faith of Abram, who believed your promise. Amen.
The Great Fast begins with a lesson in how to begin. Shubkono, the service of forgiveness, is its door, and the epistle (Ephesians 4:25–32) gives it words: “forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (4:32). Genesis gives the root: Abram, with nothing to show for God's promise, believes the God who made it. The Gospel gives the pattern: Jesus, forty days in the wilderness, answers the tempter from the word of God. Peace with one another, trust in God, and the word as our food: that is the Fast.
Setting.
Genesis 12–25 tell the story of Abraham, who is still called Abram here. God has promised him land, descendants and blessing (12:1–3), and no child has come. “After these things” points back to chapter 14, where Abram went to war to rescue Lot. God's first word, “Do not be afraid”, suggests what is in his heart. This is the first time in Genesis that Abram's own words to God are recorded, and they are a complaint.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” (15:1)
God speaks first. The promise comes before Abram has asked for anything.
“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (15:5)
Abram has been looking at what he lacks. God takes him outside and makes him look up. The answer to his complaint is not an explanation but a wider sky.
“And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (15:6)
Nothing has changed yet: there is still no child. Abram's only act is to trust. This short verse becomes one of the most quoted in the whole New Testament teaching on faith.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism presents Abraham as the model of the obedience of faith, and uses this verse in the form Paul quotes it: “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (CCC 144–146). St Paul makes it the ground of his teaching in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, and St James reads it together with Abraham's obedience (James 2:21–23). At the opening of the Fast it tells us where our discipline must begin: not with what we can show God, but with what God has promised.
Setting.
Matthew places this scene straight after the baptism of Jesus, where the voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved” (3:17). The tempter now begins twice with “If you are the Son of God”. The Spirit who came down at the Jordan leads Jesus into the wilderness. Israel was tested in the wilderness for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2). Jesus, the Son, walks that road in forty days and stays faithful. All three of his answers come from Deuteronomy.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” (4:2)
Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:8) also went forty days. The hunger is real: the Son is truly human, and the test comes at his weakest point.
“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (4:4)
From Deuteronomy 8:3, where Moses explains the manna. Jesus does not despise bread; he will feed crowds. He refuses to use his Sonship for himself.
“Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” (4:10)
From Deuteronomy 6:13. The offer of all the kingdoms is a road to power without the Cross. Jesus refuses it, and at the end of the Gospel the Risen Lord says that all authority has been given to him (28:18).
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Jesus is the new Adam, who stayed faithful where the first Adam gave in, and that he fulfils Israel's vocation perfectly (CCC 539). It adds, in the Latin Church's own wording: “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (CCC 540). St John Chrysostom says that the Lord went into temptation straight after baptism so that the baptized would not be thrown into confusion when trials come (in substance, Homilies on Matthew 13). St Augustine says that in Christ we ourselves were tempted, and in him we overcome (in substance, on Psalm 60).
Why does the Spirit lead Jesus to be tempted, if God tempts no one?
God tempts no one to sin (James 1:13). The Spirit leads Jesus into the place of testing, as God led Israel in the wilderness, and the evil comes from the tempter. Jesus enters our condition so that he can help us: “Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (Hebrews 2:18).
Shubkono comes from the Syriac word for forgiveness. Our Church does not start the Fast by counting foods. The priest bows before the people and asks their pardon, and the faithful ask pardon of one another. It stands beside today's epistle as its living form: “do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). With that peace we can walk the road of the Fast together.