Deuteronomio 2
7 Indeed, the Lord your God blessed all the works of your hands. He knows about your travels through this vast desert. The Lord your God was with you these past 40 years, so that you didn’t lack anything
Christ, who always started doing and then teaching in his life, spent forty days and forty nights in prayer and fasting before taking office. Likewise, he made the beginning of his public work with the Good News: “The kingdom of God has approached”; but he immediately added the commandment: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:15). These words are, so to speak, the epitome and summary of all Christian life. One can only enter the kingdom of Christ through metanoia, that is, through a profound change of the whole person […] The invitation of the Son of God to accomplish this metanoia is all the more urgent because he not only exhorts, but also an example of Penance there. For Christ set the greatest example of the penitent in that he did not want to be punished for his own sin, but for the sins of others.
When placed in front of Christ, man is filled with new light and thus recognizes the holiness of God and at the same time the wickedness of sin. Through Christ’s word he is given the message that offers him conversion to God and forgiveness of sins. He obtains these gifts of grace in their fullness through baptism, which is shaped in the same way as men to the resemblance of suffering, death and resurrection of the Lord and therefore, so to speak, the seal of this mystery throughout his life. Following in the footsteps of the divine master, everyone who calls himself a Christian must deny himself, take up his cross and share in Christ’s suffering. As he is transformed into the image of his death, he can also earn the glory of the resurrection. Afterwards he may no longer live for himself, but for God, who loved him and gave himself there for him (Gal 2:20); he also has to live for the brothers “so that he can replace what is lacking in Christ’s suffering … for his body, which is the Church” (cf. Col 1:24).