March 9, 2025
First Sunday of Lent
Lectionary: 24
Reading I
Moses spoke to the people, saying:
“The priest shall receive the basket from you
and shall set it in front of the altar of the LORD, your God.
Then you shall declare before the Lord, your God,
‘My father was a wandering Aramean
who went down to Egypt with a small household
and lived there as an alien.
But there he became a nation
great, strong, and numerous.
When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us,
imposing hard labor upon us,
we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers,
and he heard our cry
and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.
He brought us out of Egypt
with his strong hand and outstretched arm,
with terrifying power, with signs and wonders;
and bringing us into this country,
he gave us this land flowing with milk and honey.
Therefore, I have now brought you the firstfruits
of the products of the soil
which you, O LORD, have given me.’
And having set them before the LORD, your God,
you shall bow down in his presence.”
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15
R. (cf. 15b) Be with me, Lord, when I am in
trouble.
You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in
the shadow of the Almighty,
say to the LORD, “My refuge and fortress,
my God in
whom I trust.”
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
No evil shall befall you,
nor shall
affliction come near your tent,
For to his angels he has given command about you,
that they
guard you in all your ways.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Upon their hands they shall bear you up,
lest you
dash your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the asp and the viper;
you shall
trample down the lion and the dragon.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Because he clings to me, I will deliver him;
I will set
him on high because he acknowledges my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be
with him in distress;
I will deliver him and glorify him.
R. Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.
Reading II
Brothers and sisters:
What does Scripture say?
The
word is near you,
in
your mouth and in your heart
—that is, the word of faith that we preach—,
for, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.
For one believes with the heart and so is justified,
and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.
For the Scripture says,
No
one who believes in him will be put to shame.
For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek;
the same Lord is Lord of all,
enriching all who call upon him.
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Verse Before the Gospel
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.
Gospel
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted by the devil.
He ate nothing during those 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.”
Jesus answered him,
“It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”
Then he took him up and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.
The devil said to him,
“I shall give to you all this power and glory;
for it has been handed over to me,
and I may give it to whomever I wish.
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It is written
You
shall worship the Lord, your God,
and
him alone shall you serve.”
Then he led him to Jerusalem,
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.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It also says,
You
shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030925.cfm
Commentary on
Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13
We have now entered the great season of Lent. In times past,
Lent was not viewed as a time to which we looked forward. Fasting and
abstinence, not to mention other forms of penance, were in force and it was a
serious business. Easter was looked forward to with real anticipation. Our
attitudes to Lent tended to be on the gloomy and negative side. Perhaps
nowadays we have gone to the other extreme where Lent hardly means anything at
all, saying: “You mean Lent has started already? Really, I had no idea! Easter
will be on top of us before we know where we are and I haven’t bought a thing!”
Yet Lent has always been one of the key periods of the
Church year and it would be a great pity if we were to forget its real meaning.
In fact, that is what we ask for in the Opening Prayer of today’s Mass just
before we sit down to listen to the readings:
Grant almighty God, through the observance of holy Lent,
that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy
conduct pursue their effects.
Really, the whole purpose of Lent is beautifully summarised
in that prayer—to understand the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus and
to live that out in our own lives.
An annual retreat
The period of Lent is six weeks to help us do precisely that. The Church
provides Lent almost like an annual retreat, a time for deepening the
understanding of our Christian faith, a time for reflection and renewal and a
time to make a fresh start.
It was a pious custom in the past for people, as part of
their Lenten observance, to go to Mass every day during this time. This is even
more meaningful now since the Second Vatican Council and the reformation of the
liturgy, because we are provided with a magnificent set of Scripture readings
from both the Hebrew (Old) and Christian (New) Testaments every day during the
Lenten season.
In the First Reading of today’s Mass, Moses speaks to the
Israelites at the end of their forty years wandering in the desert and he
prepares them for their new life in the Promised Land. That is what the Lenten
season is meant to do for us also.
Traditionally on this First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel
speaks of the temptations of Jesus in the desert. Jesus has just completed his
forty days of preparation in the desert and he now faces one more test before
he begins his mission. This incident takes place between the baptism of Jesus
and the start of his public mission, beginning (in Luke’s Gospel) at Nazareth.
A time of beginning
In the early centuries of the Church, Lent was seen as a time of
beginning. It was—and again now is—a time for forming new converts, preparing
them for their formal entry into the Church community by baptism and
confirmation during the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection at the Easter Vigil.
Today, in fact, is their day of Election. Our catechumens are entering the last
six weeks of preparation for Baptism. Let us pray for them and be in solidarity
with them during this time.
For those of us who are already baptised, it can equally be
a new beginning. Often we prefer to stay with the known and the familiar, even
though it does not give us great satisfaction. We can settle into a routine
kind of Christianity that goes on basically unchanged from year to year. It is
not very inspiring, but we stick with it rather than risk the unknown that
radical conversion can bring.
Forty days in the desert
The forty days of Lent correspond to Jesus’ own forty days spent in the
desert. For him, it was a period of preparation for his coming mission. At the
end of the forty days—as described in Matthew and Luke—Jesus had three
encounters with the Evil One.
It might be worth noting that we may not be dealing here
with a strictly historical happening, something which could have been
video-taped or covered by television. The devil normally does not carry on
conversations with people like this. Temptations to evil—and they can be many
and frequent—usually come to us in far more subtle ways. (On this, read C.S.
Lewis’ marvellously entertaining book The Screwtape Letters—a
delightful read with a deadly serious message.)
Rather than just seeing them as three consecutive
temptations happening almost simultaneously at a particular moment, we should
perhaps see them as three key areas where Jesus was tempted to compromise his
mission during his public life. They were not just passing temptations of the
moment, but temptations with which he was beset all through his public life.
Some real examples of these temptations can be found in the
Gospel accounts:
The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, asking
him for a sign from heaven, to test him. (Mark 8:11)
You who would destroy the temple and build it in three
days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. (Matt
27:40)
And after feeding 5,000 hungry people with an abundance of
food, John’s Gospel tells us:
When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began
to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” When Jesus
realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king,
he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. (John 6:14-15)
Clearly, in varying forms, these temptations of Jesus can
come into our lives too.
Superstar
In today’s Gospel, the first temptation by Satan (to change stones into
bread) and the third (to jump from the top of the Temple) try to turn Jesus
away from his role as the Servant-Messiah to become an eye-catching,
self-serving superstar (‘Follow me because I am the greatest!’). The second
temptation (to worship the devil who can give power and wealth) tries to entice
Jesus away from the true direction of all human living—the love and service of
God and his creation. He is being lured from setting up a Kingdom of love and
service, to controlling an empire of minions.
Luke reverses the second and third temptations from Matthew’s
version in order to make Jerusalem the climax of the temptations, just as it is
the final destiny of Jesus’ mission and the starting point for the Church.
The forty days in the desert eating nothing reminds us of
Moses doing the very same. At the end, Moses received and proclaimed the
message of God (the Law), just as Jesus will go on to make his mission
statement in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:16-21). Also, the replies that
Jesus gives to the Evil One are all from Deuteronomy (one of five books
attributed to Moses), and his temptations correspond to those which afflicted
the Israelites on their desert journey. The difference is that the Israelites
succumbed, but not Jesus. Some examples are:
The Israelites
grumbled about not having enough food, but Jesus says:
One does not live by bread alone.
Israel constantly
tended to chase after false gods (e.g. the golden calf), but Jesus recognises
only one God:
It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only
him.’
Israel tested God
at Massah and Meribah to provide them with water, but Jesus refuses to
manipulate God, saying:
Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
All in all Jesus shows himself totally faithful and trusting
in God and thus qualified for his role as Messiah. And these temptations are
made to sound all the more reasonable because the Messiah was expected to bring
bread down from heaven, to subject other kingdoms to Israel and to perform a
dazzling sign to prove his credentials.
Most dangerous temptations
When we think of temptations, we tend to think of sexual sins, telling
lies, losing our tempers, gossiping about people’s faults (real or imagined),
getting angry, feeling resentment and the like. But the really dangerous
temptations are those that involve an unhealthy desire for wealth, status, or
power, i.e. acquiring material wealth for its own sake (the ability to turn
anything into money); desiring status (everyone looks up to me); and lusting
after power (I can manipulate people and things for my own ends).
These are dangerous because they reduce other people and
even the material world to things that can be used purely for personal gain.
They are dangerous because they create a world and a society in which everyone
has to compete to get as much for themselves as they can. In such a rat race
world, a minority corners a disproportionate amount of the world’s goods while
the majority is left without what they need. Above all, such people are
dangerous because they can create the prevailing creed of the society in which
we live. They believe that undiluted happiness comes with winning millions in
the lottery. They believe that the ownership of what they have acquired is
absolute. But there is no absolute ownership of anything.
Values of the Kingdom
The Kingdom that Jesus came to build has a different set of values
altogether. And it is those values we will be considering all during Lent. Many
Christians are fanatically chasing the idols of wealth, status and power, but
these are not only not Christian values, but in fact, they are
anti-Christian ambitions. They are not the way of Jesus, they are not the way
of the Kingdom, nor indeed are they the way to a fully human, fully satisfying
life for anyone.
This is what today’s Gospel is about. This is what Lent
means as a time of reflection and a time of re-evaluating the quality and
direction of our lives. It is a time for reconsidering our priorities both as
Christians and human beings—a time to re-affirm our conviction of the equal
dignity of every single human person.
Says the Second Reading today:
The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be
put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord
is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. For “everyone who calls
on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
It is a scandal and a crime then when some of us actively
prevent brothers and sisters having access to the material, social and
spiritual goods of God’s creation.
Endless battle
Finally, before we leave today’s Gospel, let us not overlook its final
sentence:
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from
him until an opportune time.
The battle with evil was not over for Jesus. It will occur
again and again at various stages in his life, right up to and especially
during those last hours in the garden and on the Cross.
For us, too, the battle against evil never stops. The
selfishness, the greed, the anger and hostility, the jealousy and resentment,
above all the desire to have rather than to share or to control rather than to
serve will continually dog us. We and our children are caught up in the
competitive rat race without even knowing it. Our only success in life can be
what we achieve in building not palaces or empires, but in building a society
that is more loving and just, based on the message of Jesus, a message of truth
and integrity, of love and compassion, of freedom and peace.
That is why we need this purifying period of Lent every
year. If, in past years, we let it go by largely unnoticed, let this year be a
little different. Let it be a second spring in our lives. Let it mean something
in our discipleship with Christ.
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Sunday, March 9, 2025
First Sunday of Lent
Lectio
Initial Prayer
Oh Lord, at the beginning of this Lenten time You invite me
to meditate, once more, on the account
of the temptations, so that I may discover the heart of the spiritual
struggle and, above all, so that I may
experience victory over evil. Holy
Spirit, “visit our minds” because frequently, many thoughts proliferate in our mind which make us feel that we are in the power
of the uproar of many voices.
The fire of love also purifies our senses and our heart so
that they may be docile and available to the voice of Your Word. Enlighten us
(accende lumen sensibus, infunde amorem cordibus) so that our senses may be
ready to dialogue with You. If the fire of Your love blazes up in our heart, over and above our
aridity, it can flood the true life, which is fullness of joy.
Reading of the Gospel:
Luke 4: 1-13
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the
devil. He ate nothing during those 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." Jesus answered him, "It is written, One does not live
on bread alone." Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, "I shall give to you
all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it
to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me." Jesus said
to him in reply, "It is written: You shall worship the Lord, your God, and
him alone shall you serve." Then he led him to Jerusalem, 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." Jesus said to him in reply, "It
also says, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test." When the
devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
Moment of Prayerful Silence:
To listen, silence is necessary: of the soul, of the spirit,
of the senses, and also
exterior silence,
with the purpose of listening to what the Word of God intends to
communicate.
Meditatio
Key for the Reading:
Luke, with the refinement of a narrator, mentions in 4: 1-44
some aspects of the ministry of Jesus
after His baptism, among them the temptations of the devil. In fact, he says
that Jesus, “Filled with the Holy
Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert, for forty
days” (Lk 4: 1-2). Such an episode in the life of Jesus is something
preliminary to His ministry, but it can also be understood as the moment of
transition from the ministry of John the Baptist to that of Jesus. In Mark such
an account of the temptations is more generic. In Matthew, it is said that
Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the
desert to be tempted by the devil” (Mt 4: 1), these last words attribute the
experience of the temptations to an influence
which is at the same time heavenly and diabolical. The Lukan account modifies
Matthew’s text in such a way as to show that Jesus, “filled with the Holy Spirit,” leaves the Jordan on
His own initiative and is led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
where “He is tempted by the devil” (4: 2). The meaning which Luke wants to give
to the temptations of Jesus is that those were aninitiative of the devil and
not a programmed experience of the Holy
Spirit (S. Brown). It is
as if Luke wanted to keep clearly distinct
the person of the devil from the person of the Holy Spirit.
Another element to be kept in mind is the order in which
Luke places the temptations: desert –
sight of the kingdoms of the world –
pinnacle of Jerusalem. In Matthew,
instead, the order varies: desert – pinnacle – high mountain. Exegetes
discuss which is the original disposition, but they have not arrived at a unanimous
opinion. The difference could be explained beginning with the third temptation
(the culminating one): for Matthew the “mountain” is the summit of the
temptation because in his Gospel he places all his interest on the theme of the
mountain (we just have to remember the Sermon on the Mount, the presentation of Jesus as “the
new Moses”); for Luke, instead, the last temptation takes place on the pinnacle
of the temple of Jerusalem because one of the great interests of his Gospel is
the city of Jerusalem (Jesus in Luke’s account is on the way toward Jerusalem
where salvation is definitively fulfilled) (Fitzmyer). The reader can
legitimately ask himself, “In Luke, just as in Matthew, were there possible
witnesses to the temptations of Jesus?” The answer is certainly negative.
From the account of Luke it appears clearly
that Jesus and the devil are completely alone. Jesus’ answers to the devil are
taken from Sacred Scripture; they are quotations from the Old Testament. Jesus
faces the temptations, and particularly that of the worship which the devil
intends from Jesus Himself, having recourse to the Word of God as bread of
life, as protection from God. The recourse to the Word of God contained in
the book of Deuteronomy, considered by
exegetes as a long meditation on the law, shows Luke’s intention to recall this
episode in the life of Jesus with God’s plan, who wishes to save the human race.
Did these temptations take place historically? Why do some,
among believers and non- believers, hold
that such temptations are only some fantasy about Jesus, some invention of a story? Such questions are extremely
important. Certainly, it is not possible to give a literal and unsophisticated explanation, or
perhaps to think that these could have happened in an external way. Dupont’s
explanation seems to offer an alternative: “Jesus speaks about an experience which He has
lived, but translated into a figurative language, adapted to strike the minds of His listeners”
(Les Tentations de Jesus au Desert, 128). More than considering them as
an external fact, the temptations are considered as a concrete experience in
the life of Jesus. It seems to me that this is the principal reason which has
guided Luke and the other evangelists in transmitting those scenes. The
opinions of those who hold that the temptations of Jesus are fictitious or
invented are deprived of foundation, neither is it possible to share the
opinion of Dupont himself, when he says that these were “a purely spiritual dialogue
that Jesus had with the devil” (Dupont,
125). Looking within the New Testament (Jn 6: 26-34; 7: 1-4; Heb 4: 15; 5: 2;
2: 17a) it is clear that the temptations were an evident truth in the life of
Jesus. The explanation of Raymond Brown
is interesting and can be shared: “Matthew and Luke would have done no
injustice to historical reality by dramatizing such temptations within a scene, and by masking the true
tempter by placing this provocation on his lips” (The
Gospel According to John, 308). In synthesis we could say that the
historicity of the temptations of Jesus or the taking root of these in the
experience of Jesus might be described with a “figurative language” (Dupont) or
“dramatized”
(Raymond Brown). One must distinguish the content (the
temptations in the experience of Jesus) from its container (the figurative or
dramatized language). It is possible that these two interpretations are much
more correct than those which interpret them in a purely literal sense.
An Additional Key to the Reading:
However, these intellectual interpretations, that this episode
in Jesus’ life as transmitted to us
through the gospel, are “dramatizations” or speaking figuratively, also fall
short and can be misleading. In the book “On Heaven and Earth,” Pope Francis,
the then- Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, said, “I believe that the devil
exists” and “his greatest achievement in
these times has been to make us believe he doesn’t exist.” As for the existence
of the devil, theologian Monsignor Corrado Balducci points out that "Satan
is mentioned about 300 times in the New Testament, much more than the Holy
Spirit.” In a week we will celebrate Jesus' Transfiguration on the mountain.
This is not an abstract dramatization, but rather that Moses and Elijah
appeared and the three disciples
actually heard the voice of God, yet to accept that the Son of God might
actually and verbally turn away Satan, we find it incredulous. In Pope Francis'
Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete Et Exsultate, we read:
"Hence, we should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a
symbol, a figure of speech or an idea" (161).
Without witnesses to the event, Dupont and Brown resort to
examining the event in terms of modern empirical standards. Yet, turning to
Gaudete Et Exsultate again, we read "We will not admit the existence of
the devil if we insist on regarding life by empirical standards alone, without
a supernatural understanding. It is precisely the conviction that this malign
power is present in our midst that enables us to understand how evil can at
times have so much destructive force." (160) This represents the old Gnostic
desire to shape events according to what the human intellect can easily and
completely grasp, and to replace divine
mystery with something more easily understood or identified with. While the three
temptations do have symbolic meaning, it should not detract from its realism as well. "Evil
is not only an abstract idea or the absence of good. Evil is a person, Satan:
the Evil One. Satan is the angel who opposes God and who desires to disrupt the
power of God in our lives." - Bishop
James Conley, Southern Nebraska Register.
Jesus himself identifies Satan as someone He has seen: “I
saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk 10: 18). “The prince of this
world is coming,” he says, “against me he
can do nothing” (Jn 14: 30), as well as in Jn 16: 11 and Jn 12: 31. By claiming
that the evangelist must be "dramatizing" these events, or merely using
figurative descriptions, Dupont and
Brown enter into a form of rationalism
that denies how Jesus spoke at other times. From a literary style point of view, we
would not expect every event to be transmitted as a quotation, nor would we
expect Him to return to the disciples saying "guess what happened to me in
the desert..." In that age, with its cultural and religious obsession with
sin and Satan, this direct exchange would have been treated respectfully as it
was
passed down. We cannot directly infer it to be figurative merely because it
isn't a direct quotation or is without
human witnesses.
The temptations do share a common theme though, one of
division. To separate Jesus from the Father, from His disciples, and from His
mission should Heaccept his (Satan's) proposals. In his address to new bishops
in missionary territories in 2016, Pope Francis
advised: "Divisions are the weapon that the devil has most at hand
to destroy the Church from within.” These divisions are at play today once we
move our understanding of gospel events from faith to rationalism or
pragmatism.
Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap, the Pontifical
Household preacher, puts it well in his
1st Lenten homily in 2008: If many people find belief in demons absurd, it is
because they take their beliefs from books, they pass their lives in libraries and
at desks... How could a person know anything about Satan if he has never
encountered the reality of Satan, but
only the idea of Satan in cultural,
religious and ethnological traditions? They treat this question
with great certainty and a feeling of superiority, doing away with it all as so
much "medieval obscurantism." But it is a false certainty.
It is like someone who brags about not being afraid of lions
and proves this by pointing out that he
has seen many paintings and pictures of lions and was never frightened by them.
On the other hand, it is entirely normal and consistent for those who do not
believe in God to not believe in the
devil. The episode of Jesus’ temptations in the desert that is read on the
First Sunday of Lent helps us to have some clarity on this subject.
First of all, do demons exist? That is, does the word
“demon” truly indicate some personal being with intelligence and will, or is it
simply a symbol, a manner of speaking
that refers to the sum of the world’s moral evil, the collective unconscious,
collective alienation, etc.? Many intellectuals do not believe in demons in the
first sense. But it must be noted that many great writers, such as Goethe and
Dostoyevsky, took Satan’s existence very seriously. Baudelaire, who was
certainly no angel, said that “the demon’s greatest trick is to make people believe
that he does not exist.” - Translation by
Joseph G. Trabbic.
St Teresa, who battled Satan, and St John of the Cross,
firmly believed in Satan as a being, as did Pope Paul VI: "one of the
greatest needs is the defense from that evil which is called the Devil. Evil is not merely a
lack of something but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting. A
terrible reality, mysterious and frightening..."
Thus, we don't have to abandon a literal or historical view
of these events merely because it defies our modernist senses. Moreover, it
would be overly presumptive to redefine Luke's narrative, of an interaction
between the Son of God and the Prince of Evil, as something that must have
occurred on merely human terms or in the imagination.
Luke intends to remind us in these scenes that the
temptations were addressed to Jesus by
an external agent. They are not the result of a psychological crisis or because
He finds Himself in a personal conflict with someone. The temptations, rather,
lead back to the “temptations” which Jesus experienced in His ministry: hostility,
opposition, rejection. Such “temptations” were real and concrete in His life.
He had no recourse to His divine power
to solve them. These trials were a form of “diabolical seducing” (Fitzmyer), a
provocation to use His divine power to change the stones into bread and to
manifest Himself in eccentric ways.
The temptations end with this expression: “Having exhausted
every way of putting Him to the test,
the devil left Jesus (4: 13). Therefore, the three scenes which contain the
temptations are to be considered as the expression of all temptations or trials
which Jesus had to face. But the fundamental point is that Jesus, insofar as He is the Son,
faced and overcame the “temptation.” Furthermore,
He was tested and tried in His fidelity to
the Father and was found to be faithful.
A last consideration regarding the third temptation. In the
first two temptations the devil provoked
Jesus to use His divine Sonship to deny His human finiteness, to avoid
providing for Himself bread like all men, requiring from Him an illusory omnipotence. In both of these, Jesus does not respond,
saying, “I do not want to!” but appeals to the
law of God, His Father: “It is written… it has been said…” A wonderful
lesson. But the devil does not give in
and presents a third provocation, the strongest of all: to save Himself from
death. In one word, to throw Himself down from the pinnacle meant a sure death.
The devil quotes scripture, Psalm 91, to invite Jesus to the magic and
spectacular use of divine protection, and in the last instance, to the denial
of death. This passage in the Gospel of
Luke launches a strong warning: the erroneous use of the Word of God can be the occasion of temptations.
How is that? My way of relating myself to the Bible is placed in crisis
especially when I use it only to give moral teachings to others who are in
difficulty or in a state of crisis. We refer to certain pseudo-spiritual discourses
which are addressed to those who are in difficulty: “Are you
anguished? There is nothing else you can do but pray and
everything will be solved.” This means to ignore the consistency of the anguish
which a person has and which frequently stems
from a biochemical fact or a psycho-social difficulty, or a mistaken way
of placing oneself before God. It would be more coherent to say: Pray and ask
the Lord to guide you in having recourse to the human
mediation of the doctor or of a wise and knowledgeable friend so that they can help
you in lessening or curing you of your anguish. One cannot propose biblical phrases,
in a magic way, to others, neglecting to use the human mediation. “The frequent
temptation is that of making a bible of one’s own moral, instead of listening
to the moral teachings of the Bible.” (X. Thévenot).
An Additional Key to the Reading:
However, both sides of this argument tend to be too
simplistic, and just as it would be mistaken to advise a hungry person to just
pray for a meal to appear, it is just as erroneous to reduce St John of the
Cross' Dark Night to a mere psycho-social difficulty, as well
as St Terese's
visions, or St
Paul of the Cross
or St
Teresa of Calcutta's difficulties. We are then left
with the task of discerning between these two recourses. St Ignatius of Loyola, who himself experienced
suffering on both physical and spiritual levels, offers much guidance on
discernment in these matters. A spiritual director can also help. Satan uses
division to separate us from God, and Gnosticism, pragmatism,
rationalism, and empiricism all have elements that drive us
to decide "this I can do" and
"this other maybe God could help," letting us decide, in a
typically ever growing circle, that we
can do without God, and relegating Him out of our lives. The contemporary world
expects God to come like earthquakes and thunder, rolling in to fix things. If that were so, there would
be no opportunity for faith and no free will. God speaks as in a small
whispering sound (1 Kings 19: 11-12), and when we don't hear it, we think He hasn't answered. Even more
relevant would be to pray for guidance on where help or consolation is to be
found, whether it be spiritual or physical, including recourse to the
sacraments, Eucharistic Adoration, or the Rosary as well as finding a friend.
Every hardship can be an
opportunity to increase one's faith, even if it means doing
some of the work oneself. "Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size
of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,'
and it will move. Nothing will be impossible
for you" (Mt 17: 20).
In this time of Lent I am invited to get close to the Word
of God with the following attitude: a tireless and prayerful devotion to the
Word of God, reading it with a constant
bond of union with the great traditions of the Church, and in dialogue
with the problems of humanity today.
Oratio
Psalm 119:
How blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in
the law of Yahweh!
Blessed are those who observe His instructions, who seek Him with all their hearts,
Let us renew ourselves
in the Spirit And put on the new man
Jesus Christ, our
Lord,
in justice and in true
sanctity. (St. Paul).
and, doing no evil, who walk in His ways.
You lay down Your precepts to be carefully kept.
Let us follow Jesus
Christ and serve Him
with a pure heart and
good conscience. (Rule of Carmel)
May my ways be steady in doing Your will.
Then I shall not be shamed,
if my gaze is fixed on Your commandments.
Let us follow Jesus
Christ and serve Him
with a pure heart and
good conscience. (Rule of Carmel)
I thank You with a sincere heart
for teaching me Your upright judgments. I shall do Your
will;
do not ever abandon me wholly.
Let us renew ourselves
in the Spirit And put on the new man
Christ Jesus, our
Lord,
created according to
God the Father
in justice and in true
sanctity. Amen (St. Paul).
Final Prayer:
Lord, we look for You and we desire to see Your face, grant
us that one day, removing the veil, we
may be able to contemplate it.
We seek You in Scripture which speaks to us of You and under
the veil of wisdom, the fruit of human searching.
We look for You in the radiant faces of our brothers and
sisters, in the marks of Your Passion in
the bodies of the suffering.
Every creature
is signed by Your mark, everything
reveals a ray of Your invisible beauty.
You are revealed in the service of the brother, You revealed
Yourself to the brother by the faithful
love which never diminishes.
Not the eyes but the heart has a vision of You, with simplicity
and truth we try to speak with You.
Contemplatio
To prolong our meditation we suggest a reflection of
Benedict XVI: “Lent is the privileged time of an interior pilgrimage toward the
One who is the source of mercy. It is a
pilgrimage in which He Himself accompanies us through the desert of our poverty, supporting us on the way toward
the intense joy of Easter. Even in the “dark valley” of which the Psalmist speaks
(Psalm 23: 4), while the tempter suggests that we be dispersed or proposes an
illusory hope in the work of our hands, God takes care of us and supports us.
[…] Lent wants to lead us in view of the victory of Christ over every evil
which oppresses man. In turning to the Divine Master, in converting ourselves
to Him, in experiencing His mercy, we discover a “look” which penetrates in the depth of ourselves and which can
encourage each one of us.”
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