First Sunday of Lent (C)
(Deuteronomy
26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Saint Luke’s Gospel 4:1-13)
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Jesus was led by the Spirit
into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the
devil.
Surely, we have here the source of
those words recommended later by Our Lord for our own most intimate and
personal prayer with His heavenly Father: ‘Lead us not into temptation’. Lack of understanding, whether on the part of
episcopal bodies or individuals, cannot justify tampering with Our Lord’s very-own-teaching-words,
words He uniquely recommended us to
use when praying to His Father, words handed down to us by tradition given us
to continue His uniquely saving purpose for men of all time.
Setting aside misunderstanding or
controversy, let us now try to develop our own appreciation of today’s Gospel
reading and the Lenten season we are entering upon.
Jesus, I believe, had longed to begin
His mission for perhaps some 25 years, for had not John the Baptist heard from
his father Zachary (Luke 1:76s.):
And you, child, will be
called prophet of God the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare
His ways, to give His people knowledge of salvation?
John the Baptist knew, therefore,
from early childhood of his calling and destiny; surely Jesus was, from His
earliest years, secretly orientated by His heavenly Father towards His own future
public mission, the very reason for which His Father had sent Him among men. And here is the first point I want you to
notice carefully, People of God: Jesus, the
Son of God, longed for His earthly destiny to open up before Him and aspired to
its fulfilment but … He waited long years for His Father’s call.
Now at last – so to speak – His
waiting is ended and His longing fulfilled, for we have just heard in the
Gospel:
He was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted
St. Mark tells us, THE SPIRIT IMMEDIATELY DROVE HIM OUT INTO
THE DESERT; whilst St. Matthew writes that JESUS ... WAS LED BY THE SPIRIT INTO THE DESERT.
Such words and such unanimity among
the evangelists indicate a most compelling, imperious, call which,
nevertheless, left Jesus perfectly free; and there we should again learn from Him,
dear People of God, lest we ever allow ourselves to be tempted by thoughts of ‘holiness
achieved quickly’’ for Christian holiness is a gift before it can ever be said to have been achieved. We should, indeed, long to be holy and pray
to love God without any reserve; but, with Our Lord, let us wait for, and never
lose hope in, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, working in us for the fulfilment
of God the Father’s saving purpose. Let
us humble ourselves as weak and sinful persons, whilst constantly praying to be
strong and holy; for, as the Psalmist (2:3) tells us, the just man IS LIKE A TREE PLANTED BY THE STREAMS OF
WATER, THAT YIELDS ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON.
Jesus’ season had finally come and He
was ready to undertake, and succeed in, the contest opening out before Him; we,
His disciples, must -- throughout our lives – be on the watch, waiting and praying,
that we might be found ready, like Him, to embrace our season and bring forth
fruit expected of us by God.
The first Adam, a man of earth, had originally
been tested and found wanting; Jesus, the Second Adam, the heavenly man, likewise
submitted to a testing; and here, the Gospel warns us modern Catholics and
Christians that we who have been baptized into Christ must also be prepared to
endure temptation with Him. We are tempted from without by the Evil
One, and from within by our own concupiscence.
Jesus, like the first Adam,
could only be tempted from without. Adam
could and did sin, whereas Jesus not only did not, but could not, sin. Jesus was both perfectly free and, at the
same time, infallibly holy. It is
impossible for us to understand fully how temptation affected the Son of God,
but we do know, with the certainty of faith, that it could not have touched Him
at all had He not been also, and no less truly, Son of Man. He consented to be tempted so that, as the
Epistle to the Hebrews tells us:
He might be able to
sympathize with our weaknesses, (as) One Who in every respect has been tempted
as we are, yet without sinning. (4:15)
This temptation implies two things:
first, that Jesus knew Himself be the Messiah whom the Jews were expecting; and
secondly, that He was also well aware that He possessed extraordinary
powers. The time had now come for Him to
make use of these powers, and behold, the devil was immediately at hand in the
hope of leading Him to misuse them from the very beginning.
He ate nothing for
forty days and when they were over, He was hungry. The devil said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of
God command this stone to become bread’.
Self-preservation is the most
fundamental of all our instincts, and after such a prolonged and rigorous fast
it must have been clamouring at the portals of Jesus’ will for
satisfaction. The devil tried to make
use of it. In the case of Adam and Eve
he had not sought any such help from the legitimate needs of an oppressed
nature, for, with but little effort, he had sown the seeds of distrust of God
into Eve’s heart, and Adam lamely followed her.
It would not be so easy with Jesus ... the devil guessed that much from
the beginning. But perhaps the clamouring
needs of nature might serve to blind Jesus as to Satan’s real purpose, for he
desired to accomplish in Jesus that of which St. Paul was to accuse the
Galatians (3:1-3):
O foolish
Galatians! Having begun with the Spirit,
are you now ending with the flesh?
The Spirit of God had brought Jesus,
Son of Man, into this wilderness ... would He not take care of Him there? Indeed, He would. The devil, however, invited Jesus to doubt
this, by suggesting that He make use of the power which was His for the
salvation of men and the glory of God, to satisfy a purely natural need.
But Jesus answered, ‘It
is written, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds
from the mouth of God”’.
Jesus did not deny the fact that man
needed bread for his body, but affirmed that he also had need of God’s word for
his soul, and He implied that spiritual considerations transcend, and sometimes
can over-ride, the needs of nature. This
is why the apparently excessive fasting and mortification of some of the saints
was not sinful, even though it may have ruined their health and notably
shortened their lives.
Notice also, dear friends, that Our
Lord simply quoted Sacred Scripture. How
we should reverence the Bible, for the very Son of God chose to cite its words
rather than formulate His own reply!!
Another point also imposes itself for
our consideration here. We read very
frequently in the Old Testament of the anger of God, Whose wrathful presence is
manifested in upheavals of nature ... the mountains are shaken, the sun, moon
and stars fall from their courses, lightning flashes are His arrows, the
thunder His voice, and the storm clouds His chariot. Those figures of speech give most eloquent
expression to the inspired author’s realization of the utter and absolute
incompatibility between the all-holy God and sin.
Look now, dear Brothers and Sisters in
Christ, at Jesus, God made Man: for our sake He patiently, humbly, endured being
tempted by one He found supremely loathsome and absolutely disgusting! Will we not, for His sake, try harder to
support patiently others when we find them trying?
The devil made a further bid.
He took Jesus up (Luke does not say where), and
showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant, and said ‘I shall
give You all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me. All this will be Yours, if You worship
me.’
In Psalm 2 we read of the Messiah: (THE LORD) SAID TO ME, ‘YOU ARE MY SON,
TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU. ASK OF ME,
AND I WILL MAKE THE NATIONS YOUR HERITAGE, AND THE ENDS OF THE EARTH YOUR
POSSESSION.’ Notice well, dear People
of God, how the devil tries to usurp the place of God by offering to fulfil God’s
faithful promise in his own duplicitous way.
Was Jesus’ Kingdom to be a kingdom of
this world? Was it to surpass, by its
universal embrace, the magnificence of all the empires ever seen upon
earth? Was the kingdom indeed thus to be
restored to Israel in the way the Jews wanted, was Jerusalem thus to become in
a new sense the CITY OF THE GREAT KING?
Jesus answered him:
It is written, ‘You
shall worship the Lord your God and Him alone shall you serve.’
Notice, once again, Jesus quoted Scripture
to the devil. The drama continued:
Then the devil led Him
to Jerusalem, and made Him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to Him,
‘if You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written,
“He will command His angels concerning You, to guard You” and “with their
hands they will support You, lest you dash Your foot against a stone.”’
There is (sic!) no lack of heights in
the Judean desert from which Our Lord might have been tempted to cast Himself
down; but the desert could not provide an admiring, stupefied, crowd to behold
the spectacle, and that is why the devil, Satan, took Jesus to Jerusalem.
Jesus had been sent as Man to make us
-- in Himself -- adopted children of God, His own brothers and sisters. Could the bonds which would thus bind us to
Him and to the Father in heaven ever be formed out of curious amazement and
superstitious awe? No! They would have to be unbreakable bonds of
love, indeed of bonds of shared divine charity, able to endow us with heart-willed,
mindful and humble, obedience. Love
cannot be exacted by force but must be gradually won; it cannot be foisted upon
men, but has to be gently instilled into their hearts. Jesus did not will to prove to men that He was the Messiah ... He preferred, He willed, to
lead them to spontaneously recognize Him as such. All this, however, could only come-to-be in
the Father’s good time; and here, yet again, Jesus refused any attempt to
precipitate events.
Jesus said to him In reply, ‘It also
says, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Jesus would not become a
political figure.
The devil departed from
Him for a time.
The desert had ever been, in the
tradition of the Bible, the place of temptation, the domain of the devil. Now Jesus had indeed, as St. Mark tells us
(3:27) ENTERED A STRONG MAN’S HOUSE ...
(AND) BOUND THE STRONG MAN; and St. Matthew tells us the same thing by having
Jesus reveal the devil’s personal and intimate name as Satan. Because He had thus defeated the devil in a
deep personal encounter, Jesus was, and is henceforth, able TO DELIVER US FROM THE HAND OF OUR ENEMIES
... TO GIVE LIGHT TO THOSE WHO SIT IN DARKNESS AND IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH. (Luke 1:73-79)
Never again did the devil (Satan) dare
to enter into personal combat with Our Lord.
But the battle went on, nevertheless,
to the end of Jesus’ life, for the devil stirs up men to fight his battle for
him. To the end Our Blessed Saviour
continued as He had first set out, as to His disciples, concerned about Him
having had nothing to eat, He said, MY
FOOD IS TO DO THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME (John 4:34); so, when the Jews
asked for a sign made to suit them He said, AN
EVIL AND ADULTEROUS GENERATION SEEKS FOR A SIGN; BUT NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN TO
IT EXCEPT THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH (Mathew 12:39); and when the crowds
wanted to seize Him and make Him king JESUS
WITHDREW AGAIN TO THE HILLS BY HIMSELF (John 6:15).
However, when the final drama of
Calvary was to be played, the devil once again tempted Jesus with the same
three suggestions he had made in the desert, THE RULERS SCOFFED AT HIM, SAYING, ‘HE SAVED OTHERS; LET HIS SAVE
HIMSELF, IF HE IS THE CHRIST OF GOD, HIS CHOSEN ONE! (Luke 23:35). SO ALSO, THE CHIEF PRIESTS MOCKED HIM ...
SAYING ... LET THE CHRIST, THE KING OF ISRAEL, COME DOWN NOW FROM THE CROSS, THAT
WE MAY SEE AND BELIEVE.’ (Mark
15:31-32). But Jesus would give neither
relief to His tortured body nor a sign to those ill-disposed Jews. To Pilate, indeed, He did give an answer, PILATE SAID TO HIM, ‘ARE YOU THE KING OF THE
JEWS? .... YOUR OWN NATION AND THE CHIEF PRIESTS HAVE HANDED YOU OVER TO ME;
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ Jesus answered, ‘MY KINGSHIP IS NOT OF THIS WORLD ... FOR
THIS WAS I BORN, AND FOR THIS I HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, TO BEAR WITNESS TO
THE TRUTH.’ (John 18:33-37)
Dear People of God, let us now look
at the world around us in the light of Jesus’ truth.
Secular society today wants to be rid
of the very idea of sin because it
hates above all the idea of a God of Salvation, a God becoming Man, living, suffering
and dying as a man for love of, and the-saving-of, us human beings. But men of the world today hate above all
the very thought of One having both the right and authority to interfere
in their lives. That, People of God, is
the very ESSENCE of sin: there is no
one who has any right or authority to interfere in MY life. Ultimately sin is not a matter of doing wrong
things … much that is good is being done in our present-day secular society,
but sin has never been more deeply rooted in society because most of its citizens
are now disbelievers, against the very thought of any divine power, because
each and every one of them wants to be
free to commit their very own choice of (pet) sin when it seems necessary
to them. They do not often want to be always
doing wrong things, bad things, in fact they want to think of themselves as GOOD;
but, good-without-God. A ‘free-goodness’,
isn’t that the best sort of goodness … no, because only One was free before the
face of, in the presence of, the Devil, being devilish, that is TEMPTING. And only because that One, Jesus Christ, has bestowed His most Holy Spirit on those who believe in and
obey Him, can any human person do ‘free-goodness’. All disbelievers, rationalists, or whatever
God-less people may be called or call themselves, want, theoretically, and will,
actually, commit their own choice of sin when they feel the need to do that personal
something God would prohibit.
