We are more likely to be tempted by our strengths than by our weaknesses.  If we are an industrious, energetic person, that gift can tempt us to the amass excessive wealth.  If we are a person gifted with organization and people skills, that gift can become a temptation to power.  If we are a person who has a personality that is sensitive and passionate, we can be tempted to sensual pleasure.  If we are a person who is intelligent and bright, we can be tempted to arrogance.  If we are attractive and good looking, we can be tempted to vanity.  What the story of Jesus’ temptation tells us is that, as evil approaches us, we should look to our strengths rather than to our weaknesses.  For evil takes our gifts, the things that we are good at, and tries to twist them so that instead of helping us and others, they become a poison in our lives.

So, we have Jesus, in the desert – going one-on-one with the devil.
I wonder if, in your mind’s eye,
you’re imagining a creature with horns
sporting a red cape and a pitch fork?

Of course, Matthew’s gospel doesn’t tell us what the devil looked like,
much less what he was wearing
but I know that when I’m tempted,
I never see red capes or pitchforks.

Temptation can sometimes be “right in my face”
but more often than not it sneaks up on me, as if out of nowhere,
in the half-light of shadows,
indistinct and yet somehow – appealing…

Often when temptation comes
I have a kind of déjà vu recognition of it:
I’ve seen this, or heard this, or felt this,
I’ve wanted or desired this before:
temptation’s magnetism
often seems to have a vague history with me…

What are your temptations?
Are you tempted to lie or to cheat
or to take what doesn’t belong to you?
Are you tempted to step beyond the boundaries
of your life’s situation and demands and responsibilities?
Are you tempted to eat or drink
– or buy or own – more than you need?
Are you tempted to envy and jealousy?
Are you tempted to think you know more
or you know better than God?
Are you tempted to gossip about some juicy tidbit that came your way?
Are you tempted to be biased and prejudiced?
Are you tempted to sin in your thoughts?
in your words?
in your deeds?
Are you tempted to think you have no temptations?
That’s the biggest temptation of all!

The gospel presents us with the temptation of Jesus Christ. The period of lent is a sober moment to reflect on our spiritual life. The temptation of Jesus Christ reminds us that it is part of life. The fundamental aim of every temptation is to uproot us from the very essence of our being. The temptations as presented in Matthew’s gospel, attack the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ.  Turning stones into bread; jumping down from the parapet of the temple, and bowing down to worship the Satan in exchange for the kingdoms of the world and their splendour, are all abuses of His divine power. Yielding to them will lead to disgrace of the Son of God.

Jesus Christ conquered temptation because as the gospel mentioned, He was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness. The forty days fasting and prayer period fortified his consciousness. As humans we are torn apart between the forces of good and evil. These forces struggle to mediate our desires. Both forces understand that human desire is always mediated. We do not know what to desire, thus we need to imitate the desires of the persons around us in order to know what to desire. The forces of evil succeed when we are unconscious while the forces of good succeed while we are conscious. This explains while Jesus Christ was guided by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.

For us to maintain a spirit filled Lenten season, we must be fully conscious of being led by the Holy Spirit. We are called today to allow the Spirit of the Lord to lead us as it led Jesus Christ. The fasting, alms-giving, and prayers recommended for this season is to maintain our consciousness in a special way. In the temptation of Jesus Christ, this has proven successful and the church advises us His followers to imitate his ways. We shall conquer every temptation each time we are consciously led by the Holy Spirit.

We are all tempted to sin. That is part of life. But we can defeat temptation. In some ways we all experience each of the temptations that the devil put before the Lord. The devil wanted Jesus to trust in His own power, rather than the Father. He wanted him to change rocks into bread. We also are tempted to trust in ourselves instead of trust in God. During the colonial and frontier days, Americans established the tradition of rugged individualism that became part of our national identity. But even the early settlers recognized that their strength came from God, not from themselves. I just finished reading David McCullough’s book, The Pioneers. It’s a good read, but McCullough gives little account to the fact that most of the pioneers were people of deep faith; seeking God’s protection and love, thanking Him for caring for them in many ways.

We cannot fall for the temptation to think that we can do everything ourselves. We have to trust in God. We have to have faith. Yes, we must do our best to provide for our future that of our loved ones, but, ultimately, we rely on the Lord to care for us. We can resist the temptation to push God out of our lives. This call to faith is not always that easy. In fact, it is usually quite difficult. It is quite difficult to spend so much time and energy on a child, or on a situation, for example a career, and then trust the future to God rather than to ourselves. We do our best to raise our children, but then we entrust them to God. A career opportunity comes up. We pray to God for help. We do our due diligence, make a career choice, and then trust in God.

In the second reading today St. Paul states that sin came into the world through one man.  He also refers to the “trespass of Adam,” and the disobedience of one man.  However, in the first reading we hear about Eve being tempted by the enemy of our souls and falling prey to his cunning.  Only after Eve had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree from which our first parents were forbidden to eat, did Adam eat of the fruit at the behest of his wife.  So, how can it be the sin of Adam when Eve clearly ate the fruit first?

The real difference comes in the gravity of the sin.  God told Adam directly that he could not eat the fruit of the forbidden tree; Adam told Eve what God had commanded.  Eve knew fully well that what she was doing was a serious sin, but it was not as serious as the sin Adam committed, even though they both committed the same sin.  Adam is guilty of the greater sin because his action was in direct disobedience to a clear directive that was given specifically to him by God Himself.  Eve knew she was being disobedient to God’s directive, but since she received it from Adam rather than from God, her sin was not as grave.

It is also important to note that it was not until after Adam had eaten of the fruit that the eyes of both were opened and they realized they were naked.  The text does not tell us that Eve’s eyes were opened after she had eaten; rather, both had their eyes opened only after Adam succumbed to the temptation to eat the fruit.  Perhaps one could also consider the unity of the couple, that is, Eve is more affected by Adam’s choice to sin because she had received her humanity from him.  Regardless of this, it is clear from the text that while Eve ate the fruit first, the disastrous effects on humanity took place only after Adam ate the fruit.

It is interesting, in this vein, that when Satan tempts our Lord, the first temptation has to do with eating, tempting our Lord in a way similar to how he tempted our first parents…

It’s Lent again, time to double or triple our efforts to get holy. Strangely enough, this is the time of the year, when temptation doesn’t get any sweeter or more alluring. The more we wish to grow in intimacy with God, the greater would be Satan’s effort to frustrate that goal. At the beginning of his pontificate, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who is fond of speaking about the devil as a real being rather than just some impersonal concept, had this to say about temptation: “Temptation is a normal part of life’s struggle, and anyone who claims to be immune from it is either a little angel visiting from heaven or “a bit of an idiot.”” He added that the biggest problem in the world isn’t temptation or sin, rather it is people deluding themselves into believing that they’re not sinners and losing all sense of sin.  That is why the Church begins this First Sunday in Lent with a meditation of the temptation of Christ. Yes, it is both challenging and comforting to acknowledge that no one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. And certainly not even Christ, the sinless One, the Son of God.

From the waters of the Jordan, the Spirit leads our Lord into the harsh wilderness to be tempted by Satan. The gospel presents this ordeal as an escalating series of three temptations. The first temptation is most subtle, seems harmless, innocent and even rationally necessary. The second is less so, but yet the lure of an audience could be interpreted as giving glory to God for a wondrous miracle. But the third temptation is the most blatant and audacious. All three are attempts by the Enemy to divert our Lord from the path of human suffering, the way of the cross, and ultimately from the obedience to the Father’s plan that His mission entails.

This Sunday’s readings talk about temptations. In fact, every first Sunday of Lent we read the Gospel about the temptations of Jesus in the desert. Actually, those temptations will come at various moments of his life, through disciples, Pharisees or crowds of people.  But Jesus will not be shaken for he’s resolved in his decision; his sole aim is to do the will of his Father. Let’s look at these temptations.

We would say the temptations of Jesus in the desert are but struggles that we carry within ourselves. The snake and the demon are conflicts of interests that we carry within us; a clash between our fundamental choice we have made and our inclinations that oppose it.

The malaise that the snake brings to the garden is not the promise of becoming like God, even though it sounds sacrilegious. In fact, it’s God’s intention that human beings share in his life. The trouble is that the snake injects a dose of mistrust in the relationship of human beings towards God. God has forbidden you because he knows the day you will eat of the tree you will be like him. Human beings feel cheated, they become suspicious of God and doubt his goodwill. As they can’t count on God no more –they take things in their own hands. There’s a fissure in the relationship.

Lent is a forty-day penitential season spent preparing for Easter. Forty is symbolic indicating a special time spent preparing before a substantial encounter with God. The ashes received at the beginning of Lent reminds Catholic Christians that their bodies are dust (Gen 2:7), and when humans die they return to “dust and ashes” (Gen 18:17). During Lent, emphasis will be laid on conversion. In effect “Lent is a favourable season for deepening our spiritual life through the means of sanctification offered us by the Church: fasting, prayer and almsgiving”
(2020 Lenten Message). These empower Christians to fight temptation.

The First Sunday of Lent generally focuses on the theme of Jesus’ temptation. The temptation account given in the Gospel of Mathew is very elaborate, showing the seducer’s efforts to pull down the Son of God. It was very easy to seduce our first parents Adam and Eve. The First Reading uses the image of the serpent to represent the tempter. In effect “the Hebrew word used to describe the serpent ‘nahash’, implies something much more deadly than a garden- variety snake. It is used throughout the Old Testament to refer to powerful evil creatures. (cf. Scott Hahn, Understanding the Scriptures, 56).

The word “nahash” is used in the book of Numbers 21 to describe the “fiery serpents” which attacked the Israelites in the Desert. Isaiah 27:1 uses the word to depict the great mythical dragon, Leviathan, and in the book of Job 26:13, “nahash” is used to refer to great sea monsters. It is this terrible creature that our parents chose to lead them to spiritual death which left the mark of original sin on our soul.

Knowing fully well that Jesus came to save us as promised in Gn 3:15, the same tempter came to derail Jesus’ mission. It happened when Jesus was preparing for his public ministry through a 40-day fasting in the wilderness. This symbolic number, 40, recalls Moses’ (Ex 24:18) and Elijah’s fasts (1 Kgs 19:18) and the wanderings of Israel in the desert (Dt 1:3). Forty (40) also represents the number of days and nights of rain it took to engulf the world in the Flood (Gn 7:12) so that a new world could be created. Thanks to Jonas’ preaching, the citizens of Nineveh were able to fast for 40 days to reconcile with God and restrain Him from the planned destruction of their city.

Being truly human, Jesus was hungry after fasting for forty (40) days. The devil, therefore, attacked his empty stomach asking Him to change stones into loaves of bread. Quoting Dt 8:3 Jesus showed the devil that God’s Word surpasses human hunger.

In the second temptation, the devil even quoted the scriptures, asking Jesus to throw Himself down since Psalm 91:1-12 says God will send His Angels to guide and protect us even when our foot strikes a stone. Jesus resisted the tempter quoting Dt 6:16 “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

The last temptation was to make Jesus bow and worship the devil to gain all authority and glory of the World. Jesus sent Satan away quoting the First Commandment which obliges us to Worship God alone.

Jesus never allowed the devil to defeat Him despite the devil’s temptations. Jesus had a very powerful tool- God’s Word in the Scriptures. The devil also tried to use the same strategy but failed. As the new Adam, Jesus overcame the temptation which the first Adam could not. This Lent and always, we are also invited to endure temptation whenever it comes. We are also invited to undergo hardship as a spiritual exercise, as strengthening and a preparation for the real temptation that awaits us.

St Matthew tells us that the Spirit led Jesus into the the desert “to be tempted by the devil.” Jesus faced temptations in his humanity. Now, as God Jesus could have simply said, “be gone.” But he did not draw on that unlimited power. He faced temptations as a man. Why?

The Letter to the Hebrews gives the answer, “Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” When you or I are tested or tempted – when we want to give up – we can turn to Jesus.

Jesus shows us the way to face temptation. We see above all that Jesus is immersed in the Scriptures. After 40 gruelings days which correspond to the 40 years of the Israelites in the desert, the devil points out how the stones look like small loaves of bread. Use your power to satisfy youself, he says. Jesus responds with a word from the Bible:

“One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”

Now, the devil of course can quote Scripture – but he does it out of context. He takes a verse from a Psalm about trusting God, then distorts it. He tells Jesus to throw himself down from the parapet of the temple. God won’t allow you, he says, “to dash your foot against a stone.”

Temptations. They come to every one of us. A temptation is a trick, a deception, a lie. It conceals the truth and presents falsehood to us as the truth. A temptation may even offer us something good but entices us to use it in a false and selfish way. Temptations lure us into doing or saying or thinking something that does not reflect who we really are as sons and daughters of God. A temptation tries to convince us with a false charm but is not there to help us pick up the pieces and deal with guilt afterwards. A temptation conceals from us the true road to peace and joy and happiness giving us instead the illusion of a quick and easy way to find what is really good and worthwhile in life. A temptation is therefore sneaky, offering us what appears to be a quick-fix, but is in reality a quick-disaster. A temptation is therefore irrational and has no sense. A temptation hopes we will not use our brains because if we do use our brains when temptation comes, we will quickly notice how stupid following a temptation would be. It is no wonder that temptation succeeds best during those times when our brains are not at full potential e.g., when under the influence of alcohol or drugs or when tired or under stress. Is there anything more deceptive and sneaky and two-faced than temptations? No wonder that temptations come from the devil, whom Jesus called the father of lies (John 8:44).

There is a salvific equation at work in the readings for this first Sunday of Lent and it is important to recognize as we begin this Lenten season and our journey to Easter. The equation is this: we sinned by trying to grasp the glory of God and God saves us by letting go of His glory and becoming a servant.

Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent in the garden. “You certainly will not die! No. God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.” We try to grasp the glory that is due to God alone. We try to make of ourselves little gods – controlling our world, controlling everything, answerable only to ourselves! It is a form of pride and it is the root of all sin. We sin by trying to claim the glory of God for ourselves.

God answers not by condemning nor by destroying all of sinful humanity and starting anew. No, God answers our insult by coming even closer than before. God enters into his very creation in the form of a servant. In the temptations in the desert we find Jesus taking on the mantle and role of the servant.

The servant is the one who is never satisfied in his own needs because he is required first and foremost to see to the satisfaction of his master. The servant is the one who claims no special status. He is just a servant after all. The servant has no power. In each of the three temptations we see our Lord taking on the mantle of the servant.

Without maintenance a car would soon become undrivable and a home would fall down around our ears. Without the kind of loving maintenance that you Mums and Dads and your children contribute, a family, too, would stop functioning well. If we do not tend a garden, flowers die and weeds take over. So it is with our lives. We may be flying along with the wind in our sails, or we may be just drifting along going nowhere in particular. Either way, it is important that we learn to head in a direction that is life-giving. The aim of Lent is to open our minds and hearts to God’s Spirit who will show us Jesus and also show us the sin in our lives which is stopping our movement towards him, and causing us to be stuck in the spiritual doldrums or, worse still, is driving us onto a reef where we are breaking up.

As Catholics we are bound by a serious obligation to go to communion at least once a year, sometime during the Lent-Easter Season. This is because, if we never come to communion, we cannot maintain our life of union with Jesus. Jesus himself said: ‘Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot have life in you’(John 6:53). Therefore, if we are in a state of serious sin that prevents us coming to communion, there is a consequent obligation to come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation sometime before Easter.

The sin of the first humans was to reject the condition of humanness: splendid creatures, yet nonetheless dependent on God.

The gift of the new Adam was a total acceptance of humanness, an entering so deeply into our limits, and even into the effects of our sin, that there would be no other reality to his consciousness than abandonment to the will of the one who sent him.

So what’s left for us, we who are neither God nor savior? Well, to receive the truth is a great and difficult thing. That is why the true sacrament of confession is so marvelous (and so rare). If we just acknowledge the simple truth of our limits and our sins before God and Christ’s people, we reverse the offense of Eden and enter the gift of Calvary.

In acknowledging the lies of our own egotisms, of the great injustices of the world, of the excesses in appetite, of the woundings in relationship, of all the mean divisions in the church, we drop once again the heavy mask of deception. It falls from our faces, revealing our need.

We are sinners, dear friends. If we do not know that, we suffer a poverty of self-knowledge. But if we yield to the truth, not only that we are creatures, but that we are in sore need of redemption, we are newly free, open to love.

We reverse the big lie of Eden as we embrace the big truth of Gethsemane, now able to say with the one who graced our fallen state, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Lent is starting out in a very surreal way this year. Many of us have one eye on entering into this holy season like we do every year and another eye on the news, wondering about issues like the coronavirus, and whatever other problems our country and world faces. And while it is good to always be aware of what is happening around us, to have our preparations in place in case they become necessary, the Church nevertheless invites us each year to leave the world behind so to follow Jesus into the desert, a place where we get away from the crowd and get away from the noise so to enter a period of purification and enlightenment. In today’s day and age of constant information, this is very difficult to do but nevertheless important for our spiritual growth. I don’t know about you, but I have found that it is also important to turn off our phones and news feeds every so often just to give our souls a break. And here is a fun fact, since we are hearing the word “quarantine” over and over in the news, it was interesting to find out that the etymology of the word “quarantine” can actually be seen as coming from an older Italian dialect meaning “Forty Days”! This was back in the days when ships would be put into holding for about forty days before being allowed into European ports. When I realized that this past week I couldn’t help but think that the season of Lent could be seen as a kind of quarantine, a spiritual quarantine, where we follow Jesus into the isolation of the desert for forty days for a period of purification and enlightenment.

The Church this year gives us very provocative readings to help us begin this spiritual pilgrimage. I am particularly struck by the juxtaposition of the first reading and the Gospel reading. Both readings talk about temptation. Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent. Jesus is tempted by the devil. Adam and Eve succumb to the temptation and become distanced from God. Jesus triumphs over his period of temptation and the suggestion seems to be that we can too if we are united with Jesus in our times of struggle and doubt. And so, where did Adam and Eve go wrong during their time of temptation and what went right in the Gospel reading with Jesus’ time of temptation?

God created Adam and Eve in his image and established them in his friendship. However, they could not be friends with him as equals, for he was their Creator and they his creatures. As such, they had insurmountable limits, symbolized in the Bible by God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God planned to “divinize” them – to make them divine, like himself. Moreover, Adam and Eve themselves wanted to be like God. However, Satan twisted the truth, persuading them that they could become like God on their own, without God.

Satan twisted the truth to Jesus as well…

Now the temptations Satan offers us are just as plausible as those in this Sunday’s Readings. For example, a man whose wife has left him wants to marry someone else. When the Church tells him that he cannot, for his first marriage is valid, Satan says, “God wants you to be happy; the Catechism says so. So go ahead; take the woman you want.”

Satan is a spirit, much more powerful and subtle than we are. How do we guard ourselves against his temptations?