1st Sunday of Lent

From the Gospel, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.”

This Lent, Jesus invites each of us when he says, “Follow Me.” In the Lenten season, we seek to enter the same space as Jesus. We too are led by the Holy Spirit into the desert of to experience fasting and self-denial and to be tempted and to be tested by the devil.

Yes we seek conversion in the Lenten season. We seek to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. As for Jesus, so too for us, that conversion in our lives will not take place without dealing with the temptations of Satan. In talking with someone I regard as a holy person, I simply asked her: “How are you doing?” She responded: “There still is a bit of the devil in me.” This may sound unusual but it expresses a truth about all of us. We have not fully overcome sin. Lent is a time for us to get rid of whatever bit of the devil that remains in us.

Lent is a wonderful time to be honest with ourselves and to recognize that which is not yet transformed in us. Lent is a “desert season.” The Gospel invites us to go to the desert and to see things as they really are. The desert is the place of struggle in life. We need to deal with temptations. The desert is also the place we encounter God. The places of struggle in life can lead us to trust in God’s unending live for us.

Although we human beings are naturally social creatures, there are certain times in our lives when we need to go off and be alone to confront the “demons” that dwell within us. Jesus in the Gospel went into the desert alone. Lent is our experience of this desert experience. In the Lenten season, we ask ourselves what is preventing us from following Jesus?

What are the demons that feed our addictions, what brokenness do we experience, what areas of our life are in need of healthy disciplines? Do we have anger management issues; how addicted are we to alcohol; who are we unable to love; does our need to control trample on the dignity of others; is our sexuality an undisciplined part of our lives? Jesus dealt with three specific temptations in his desert experience. Are we too able to name the specific temptations in which are to confront in the Lenten season?

The gift and the challenge of Lenten spiritual disciplines is to reflect on our freedom to be for others. If we are unable to fast, we are slaves to our appetites and passions. We are less free to be for others. Our fasting is not just a private thing to lose weight and look better. It is about fasting that gives the inner freedom to share what we have with others.

The discipline of our Lenten prayer is the capacity to place God first in our lives. The busyness of life is not to crowd out the giftedness of our inner journey. Sometimes there is so much activity in our life that we lose touch with our own soul. May the Lenten season for myself and for all of us to stay awake to the presence of God in our lives. May this Lent be God’s gift to us that indeed we are God’s redeemed and forgiven people. In the solitude of the desert, may we present ourselves to the Lord just as we are, and trust God will accept you for we are.

A fundamental temptation for us is forgetting the Lord and the ways he has blessed us. All of us wrestle with the Lord a bit in our spiritual journey. In one moment, we turn our lives over to the Lord. In the next moment, we are tempted by food or power or recognition. We can too easily lose our spiritual footing.

Prayer is so important in our life – the prayer that allows to be grateful for the blessings, the prayer that enables to rejoice that we are God’s beloved.

In today’s Gospel account, the three temptations seek to get Jesus to secure a legitimate end through illegitimate means, through the misuse of his power. The real temptation in all of this is that Satan is offering Jesus a way to be the Messiah without the cross.

The way the tempter dealt with Jesus is how the tempter deals with us -- offering us discipleship of the Lord Jesus minus the cross in our life. It can seem very appealing and very pious but, in truth, following Jesus means an openness to embracing the cross in life. The way to experience the Easter joy is by uniting our pain and setbacks and losses with the cross of Christ.

The cross is part of who Jesus is, and it is an enduring sign of his unconditional love for us. The Lenten season invites us to place of the cross in our spiritual journey.

We accept the cross in life by embracing spiritual disciplines. We also take up the cross by our commitment to trust in God’s healing presence in the face of the brokenness that causes us to lose our center. The stations of the cross describe the stages of the
suffering and death of Jesus. As we experience the stations of the cross of illness, of death, of brokenness in our own stories, may we too get the help of Simon of Cyrene and be strengthened by the love of Mary our mother. As for Jesus, our own stations of the cross are our way of discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For Jesus and ourselves as well, temptations distract us from asking the great questions of life. Temptations try to get us off the beam, distract us our mission of gratitude, discipleship, hospitality, and keep us from witnessing to the love of Jesus in our world.

Lent is a wonderful time to be honest with ourselves and to recognize that which is not yet transformed within us. We are then invited to place our lives more completely in the hands and the heart of a God who loves us infinitely. May we walk with God in this time of Lent.