Brothers and Sisters, welcome to Lent. As we enter into this sacred season, we enter into a time of increase. We increase our prayer, we are mindful of the need to mortify ourselves through fasting, and we increase the charitable giving of our time, talent, and treasure. Too often we view Lent as a time of renunciation. Yet, the church prefers that we look at this time in a positive light. If I renounce something, it is only to make room for something far greater.
As I reflect upon the readings that Holy Mother Church gives us for this First Sunday of Lent, I am struck by the theme of temptation. In the first reading from Genesis, we hear of the second creation account, particularly of how God created man and placed him in paradise. We hear how God breathed the breath of life into them. He endowed them with freedom (the ability to choose) and with intellect (the ability to know). All that God did for man was completely unmerited; man did nothing to deserve God’s favor. He chose him because he loved him. God wanted a being that would be able to respond to his love and return it.
Everyone knows what happens next in the story. The serpent enters the garden and tempts the woman. Man, already shirked his responsibility of exercising dominion over Eden. He was called to guard and protect as a good steward is supposed to. Yet, the serpent enters unimpeded. Man’s irresponsibility led the fall. His great temptation was distraction. And how does the serpent tempt Eve? He questions God’s motives. He instills doubt. He convinces Eve that God forbade the eating of the fruit because he knew that if she ate, then she would be like him. This was her great temptation: doubting the goodness of God.
No one is exempt from temptation. The angels were tested at the dawn of creation. There is a tradition that God revealed his plan for the incarnation, and this was too much for Lucifer and his rebellious angels. That God, infinitely perfect in himself, would lower himself and take on a corporeal body, was incomprehensible to them. And even worse, that God would elevate man with the dignity reserved solely for intellectual beings, and raise him even higher than the angels, caused a third of them to declare, “I will not serve.”
Jesus was also tempted as we hear about in today’s Gospel. After his baptism in the Jordan, after the Father’s affirmation of his divine sonship, he is driven by the Spirit into the desert for forty days. Forty days, a day for every year that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. There he fasted and he prayed. He increased his practice of these spiritual disciplines. He fortified himself for the temptation that was to come. And where does Satan tempt Jesus? In his identity. “If you are the Son of God...”
So what about you and me? Well, there is nothing new under the sun. We are still tempted in our identities. “If you are a son or daughter of God...” How often do we grasp at false identities and lies. How often do we allow our weakness and sinfulness to define us. How often do I try to be like God without God, all the while forgetting that I am already like God. How often do I seek approval from the world while I become deaf to the still small voice of God crying out, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”
So, during this season of Lent, let us remove the dross that we cling to. Let us turn away from the voice of the world that tells you that you aren’t good enough. Let us increase our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving so that when the temptation comes, we may stand firm.
Peace,
Seminarian Benjamin