First Sunday of Lent (A)
I Will Serve
When we take a serious look at ourselves, we realize that there are things that keep us from being the persons and the Christians we wish we were. We feel that we are not free to be our true selves. At the beginning of his mission Jesus looked at himself and saw the temptations that would keep him from carrying out his mission. Lent is for us the time to look into ourselves and to see what keeps us from being free to serve and love God and people the way we should. Let us go with Jesus into the desert, look into the depth of ourselves, and with Jesus reject what imprisons us, what keeps us lukewarm and indifferent, so that like him and with him we can serve.
Reading 1 Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7
At the time God made Earth and Heaven, before any grasses or shrubs had sprouted from the ground—God hadn’t yet sent rain on Earth, nor was there anyone around to work the ground (the whole Earth was watered by underground springs)—God formed Man out of dirt from the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. The Man came alive—a living soul!
Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the Man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil.
The serpent was clever, more clever than any wild animal God had made. He spoke to the Woman: “Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?”
The Woman said to the serpent, “Not at all. We can eat from the trees in the garden. It’s only about the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘Don’t eat from it; don’t even touch it or you’ll die.’”
The serpent told the Woman, “You won’t die. God knows that the moment you eat from that tree, you’ll see what’s really going on. You’ll be just like God, knowing everything, ranging all the way from good to evil.”
When the Woman saw that the tree looked like good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.
Immediately the two of them did “see what’s really going on”—saw themselves naked! They sewed fig leaves together as makeshift clothes for themselves.
Reading 2 Rom 5:12-19
You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
Gospel Mt 4:1-11
Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights. That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: “Since you are God’s Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread.”
Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God’s mouth.”
For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, “Since you are God’s Son, jump.” The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: “He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone.”
Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: “Don’t you dare test the Lord your God.”
For the third test, the Devil took him to the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth’s kingdoms, how glorious they all were. Then he said, “They’re yours—lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they’re yours.”
Jesus’ refusal was curt: “Beat it, Satan!” He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: “Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness.”
The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus’ needs.
Prayer
God our Father,
in the desert your Son Jesus struggled forty days
with the demands of his mission,
and he overcame all temptations.
In these forty days of Lent
convert us, turn our hearts
to the peace of your forgiveness,
the light of your love,
your concern for people.
Let us find the life and the joy
which Jesus brings us,
and dispose us to share it with others.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.
Reflection:
1st Sunday of Lent
26 February 2023
Matthew 4:1-14
Temptations are for a lifetime to tackle
Imagine to place ourselves in the place of St. Matthew while he was writing his Gospel. What was his source of information for the episode of the temptation of Jesus? This passage could raise a lot of questions: Where is the high mountain from which somebody could see the world’s kingdoms? How could Jesus go so long without eating? Who told Matthew about the conversation between Jesus and the devil?
There we come to the realisation that this is a page of catechesis, and this narration of temptation in the desert was lasting a lifetime. In the Bible, the number 40 indicates a whole generation, a lifetime. Matthew’s readers were mostly Jewish Christians who knew the Old Testament well. To them, Matthew explains a parallelism between the life of Israel and the life of Jesus:
The three temptations refer to three events of the Exodus: The temptation to turn the stones into bread refer to the murmurings of the people over the lack of food and the gift of the manna (Ex 16). The temptation to perform a spectacular show refer to the protests of Israelites over lack of water (Exodus 17). The third temptation refer to the idolatry represented by the golden calf (Exodus 32). Jesus, therefore, is subject to the same temptations and teaches his followers how to overcome them.
God has placed Israel in front of the manna to educate them to trust in God’s providence. They are caught up in the frenzy of desire to possess wealth and accumulate food. God wanted to teach them to control their greed, but failed: the seduction of the goods of this world is almost unstoppable. It is difficult to make everyone content with what is just enough to live on.
Jesus proposes an antidote to the temptation to accumulate wealth and food – every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
The second temptation: “Throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple” (vv. 5-7). The ultimate goal of evil is to undermine any relationship with God. Devil creates doubtsin people’s minds whether the Lord keeps his promises or not. The need ‘to demand proof’ arises from this doubt. In the desert, the people of Israel, exhausted by thirst, succumbed to this temptation and exclaimed: “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Ex 17:7). When faced with struggles in life, we too experience similar temptation – Is the Lord among us?
The third temptation is the temptation of power, of domination over others. The people of Israel in the desert got tired of their God and worshiped a golden calf. Where dominion is exercised over others, where people struggle to prevail over others, where someone is forced to kneel or bow down in front of another, the logic of evil is at work. Jesus did not overcome the temptations in forty days, but through his life.