First Sunday of Lent

St. Luke offers us the model for our Lenten journey when he tells us that Jesus was led into the desert for forty days of prayer and fasting. It was during this time that Jesus had His first face-to-face showdown with the devil. That same devil who had incited Herod to try to destroy the Christ Child in Bethlehem now comes before the Holy One under the guise of gentleness and compassion. We should pay close attention to the form the three temptations take, for it is here in the arid wilderness of the Judean Desert that Jesus begins His life’s work of total submission to the Father. The devil tempts Jesus using the same tactics He used in the Garden of Eden and the same tactics he continues to use today. It is the age-old lie whispered into our ears—by sinning we will become like God. We see this in the Garden (see Gen 3:5), and we see it in our day-to-day lives. Every time we sin, the message we send with our actions is that we wish God were not so; we choose to put ourselves in the place of God such that we become the final arbiters of good and evil. Whereas Sacred Scripture promises we will become partakers of the Triune godhead through divine adoption, the devil constantly prods us to become like God, “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (CCC, 398). Likewise in the desert, Jesus is faced with the temptation to Look at how much good you could do, look at all the problems you could solve, if only you would commit this one little act of disobedience. Jesus faces the prospect of ending world hunger, ruling all the kingdoms of the earth, bringing countless souls to believe in Him, and achieving all this without having to suffer the looming Passion that awaits Him. The devil only asks one thing of Him: “All this will be yours, if you worship me.” In other words, Jesus can achieve all the good in the world if only He will turn away from God. Yet despite his best efforts, the devil fails. Jesus remains obedient to the Father, humbly trusting that He is the better way, and it is precisely in doing this that He begins to bring about the salvation of the world.

How can I foster a greater devotion to Sacred Scripture in my life thereby growing in my appreciation for who God is and what He has done for me?

-Journey Through Reflections on the DAILY MASS READINGS by Clement Harrold