[Salvation]

First Sunday of Lent -- Our Desert

 

(Ivan Kramskoi)

 

". . . and afterwards he was hungry . . ."

 

The Word for Sunday: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/030914.cfm

Gn 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7
Rm 5: 12-19
Mt 4: 1-11

Now and then we all have days in which something just doesn’t go right.  In fact, it may be a series of events that just seem to snowball one after the other which causes us frustration and disappointment until they finally even out.  So often in ministry we find that interruptions are the norm rather than the exception.  One works hard at certain arrangements and in the end you find that “plan B” is necessary.  It may be something small like a glitch in the sound system or a scheduled person who cannot show up at the last minute or something far more serious that may cause you to cancel an event all together.

 

As we begin this First Sunday of Lent we hear a well-known story from Genesis that indeed something went wrong with humanity not long after God created us.  Things did not work out as originally planned. God “blew into his (Adam’s) nostrils the breath of life . . .” God then created Eve and set these two first human beings in a Garden, rich with beautiful trees and abundant fruit.  Then, the snake appears and both man and woman believe the serpent’s lie and take to themselves their own will over that of God.  That original sin of disobedience which caused shame and guilt to enter, exhibited by the embarrassment of their nakedness, now needed to be corrected. A savior would need to obey – a new Adam must come for we could not save ourselves from our own sin.  

St. Paul in Romans reminds us that through one man (Christ Jesus), “the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”  Through Christ Jesus, “the many will be made righteous.” So, rather than a garden, a desert would be the place to confront evil and its source again.

St. Matthew’s Gospel passage is rich with drama as we see Jesus, “led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”  Here our new Adam must now face the sin of all humanity which he had taken upon himself.  In the most vulnerable time of his desert experience, the tempter approaches for after forty days and nights of fasting, Jesus “was hungry.”  We could assume he was weak and thirsty as well.  In his weakness, the devil approached and near slithers up to Jesus like the serpent in the garden.

As the first sin was the result of food, so now the first temptation addresses physical hunger: “. . . command these stones become loaves of bread.” Unsuccessful, the tempter moves to the human desire for self-rule: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” God will catch you.  Lastly, the final temptation confronts our hunger for pride, power, and prestige.  As Jesus is shown “all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,” he demands that Jesus bow before the tempter and he can have them all: worldly fame, money, and all the advantage the world can bring.  All three temptations together are essentially a means to grab the easy way, the way of my will above that of God’s and essentially for Jesus to abandon his mission of death and resurrection for which he was sent among us to break through the wall and power of sin (death) which estranged us from God. We all know he did not succumb to the devil’s attempts.

Thereby, Lent is an invitation to find our spiritual desert where we confront the truth of our lives.  Here we may find something that upsets us, something we know has to change, or something for which we are grateful yet still need more help.  Yet, the greatest gift is to know that we are not alone in the desert of isolation because we can and should call upon our Lord to come with us.  To believe that God is greater than our sin and more powerful than the forces of evil around us is to know that his mercy and forgiveness is here to call us to a new direction and a new life.

Whenever the moment arrived and reflecting glass provided a mirror, much better than staring into a pond of water, I wonder what the first reactions were like.  Once we could see ourselves as we are did we like what we saw?  Much more likely we could see the many imperfections – a wrinkle here, a gray hair there, a little too chubby here, a nose or ear not proportioned properly, lips too thin, forehead too wide, etc.  We could all go on and on.  The cosmetic industry spends billions of dollars fixing the outside of us but Lent is not cosmetic surgery.  

In the Lenten desert we should see ourselves as we are and turn to the grace of God to correct the faults of our souls and lead us to holiness and virtue which is true beauty.  May the grace of God lead us to a healing desert in these weeks ahead of us.  The sacraments of Reconciliation and the holy Eucharist are powerful tools provided by Jesus our Divine Physician who showed us how we might be “made righteous” before God in this ancient desert time.

 

Grant, almighty God,

through the yearly observances of holy Lent,

 

that we may grow in understanding

of the riches hidden in Christ

 

and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.

 

(Collect of Mass)

 

Fr. Tim

[Salvation]

Insight Scoop

A Cross-less Christianity is a lie of the devil

"The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain" by Duccio di Buoninsegna (ca. 1308-1311)

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, March 9, 2014 | The First Sunday of Lent | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Gen 2:7-9; 3:1-7
• Psa 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17
• Rom 5:12-19
• Matt 4:1-11

“He that seeks not the cross of Christ,” wrote St. John of the Cross, “seeks not the glory of Christ.” Put another way, a cross-less Christianity is a lie of the devil. Lent, which leads us to Holy Week and the crucifixion, is a challenging reminder of this difficult but ultimately glorious truth.

The first Adam, shaped from dust by the Creator, walked and talked with God. But then he was tested and fell in the garden. Having listened to the serpent, he succumbed to the temptations of self-will and self-love, rejecting the will and love of God. Seeking his own glory, he was banished to the dust and dryness of the world, separated from friendship with God.

Through Adam, St. Paul explained to the Christians in Rome, “sin entered the world, and through sin, death.” Sin and death have ever been with us ever since; the temptation to seek our will is constantly with us.

Severed from God’s life, what could mankind do? Look to God’s gracious gift, “the one man Jesus Christ”, the new Adam. The co-eternal Word was not created, but “begotten”, having no beginning. But although all things were created for him and through him (Col 1:15-17), he chose to be born into the fallen, desperate world of man. After being baptized in the Jordan (Matt 3:13-17) and revealing his divinity, he was then led by the Spirit into the desert to walk and talk and be fed by the Father.

Then, after forty days, he was tested by the devil. Would he, like the old Adam, listen? Would he, like the first man, give in to the lures of the tempter?

He did listen, of course. The fact is, in this world it is impossible to escape temptation. And Jesus, being fully man, really was tempted: “For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted” (Heb 2:18; cf. 4:15). But while the old Adam did not refute the words of the serpent (and so opened himself to disaster), the Word-made-flesh rebuked the father of lies. He knew what he was facing, and he did not hesitate or second guess when the devil misused Scripture. Jesus went into the desert to battle, to fight and renounce the devil and the passing glories of this world. He knew that true glory is not found in power, but in obedient, faithful sonship.

Much has been rightly made of how Jesus rejected the same temptations—hunger, selfishness, rebellion—that had overwhelmed the Israelites in the desert (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, par 538-40). But the Gospel shows how Jesus emphatically distinguished himself from the many self-proclaimed messiahs, false prophets, and political zealots so common in first-century Palestine.

Turning stones into loaves of bread would have not only satisfied his hunger, but been evidence of magical powers—a most attractive quality for anyone seeking worldly attention. And commanding God to keep him from harm if he threw himself from the temple parapet would have marked him as a powerful prophet or visionary able to control the will of God. The third temptation was the most direct and blatant. If Jesus had given up everything for political power, he would have shown himself to be a political revolutionary intent only on earthly glory and temporal power. “The devil,” writes Craig S. Keener in his commentary on Matthew (InterVarsity, 1997), “offered Jesus the kingdom without the cross, a temptation that has never lost its appeal.”

But Jesus is not a magician, a self-serving prophet, or a political zealot. He is the Son of God who came to do the Father’s will (Jn 6:38-40). The new Adam, in the garden of Gethsemane, prayed that the Father’s will would be accomplished. Tested in both desert and garden, he was glorified by and through the cross—the instrument of death which is, wrote Pope St. Leo I, “the true ground and chief cause of Christian hope.”

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the March 13, 2011, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)