FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
9 MARCH 2025
In
the reading from Deuteronomy, Moses addresses his people who are about to
arrive in the promised land. He tells
them that they have become a nation:
great, strong, and numerous. They
have been formed into this great nation by God who had saved them slavery in
Egypt and led them through the desert to freedom. Mindful of God’s role, he commands them to
give God the firstfruits of the products of the soil in gratitude. Moses knew that they would quickly forget
God’s role and try to find satisfaction in other things. He knew that they would repeat their many failures
to trust God in their forty years in the desert.
Today, Jesus
is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to be tested, as his ancestors had
been tested. He has just been baptized
and heard his Father’s voice from the heavens identifying him as his beloved
son, in whom he is well pleased. After
fasting for forty days, Jesus is hungry.
The devil sneers at him to test him.
If he is God’s son, he can change stone into bread. Jesus resists the temptation and quotes
Deuteronomy to insist that one does not live on bread alone. Next, the devil tempts him to skip his
mission of dying on a cross to have all power and glory now. Again, Jesus resists the temptation and
quotes Deuteronomy to say that he must worship God alone. Finally, the devil tempts Jesus to throw
himself from the parapet of the temple to see if God would save him. The devil knows Scripture and quotes Psalm 91
to predict that angels will catch him.
Jesus quotes Deuteronomy again to insist that he cannot put his Father
to the test.
In our
forty-day journey through Lent, we face the same temptations that tested Jesus
and his ancestors. Like his ancestors,
we can easily forget that God is the source of all that we have and are. The devil tests us with the same three
temptations. Instead of putting all our
trust in God, we are tempted to put our trust in sensual gratification. We fall into gluttony and lust trying to fill
our deepest hungers. The devil wants us
to rely on power and riches instead of trusting in God’s care and
providence. He lies to convince us to yearn
for an ostentatious display of pride and vainglory, instead of being humble
enough to admit God’s power.
The Holy
Spirit has led us into this desert of Lent to help us resist the lies of the
devil. The Lord has given us the tools
of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer as remedies to each temptation. To combat the temptation to see sensual
gratification as the ultimate way to fill our longings, the discipline of
fasting can help us embrace the remedy of self-control. To fight the temptations for power and
riches, the discipline of almsgiving helps us practice detachment from material
things. Almsgiving helps us to avoid
creating fake needs for ourselves and consider the authentic needs of
others. To fight the temptation to be
prideful and full of ourselves, the Lord has given us the remedy of
prayer. We can use Scripture, not as the
devil used it, but as Jesus himself used it, to humble ourselves before God and
rely on his grace.
At Easter,
we will renew the promises made at our baptism to reaffirm our conviction that
Jesus Christ is at the center of our lives, and that we will orient our lives
with that conviction. As a fully human
person, Jesus resisted the temptations of the devil and emerged from the desert
determined to do the will of his Father.
As the eternal Son of God, he won our salvation by dying on the cross
and trusting his Father’s promise that death would not prevail. The Holy Spirit gives us the strength to
recognize the lies of the devil, to embrace the remedies given through the
Lenten disciplines, and to emerge from this desert of Lent at Easter renewed in
our faith and determined to live as beloved sons and daughters of the Father.
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