THE FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT
GOSPEL: Matthew 4:1-11
Dear friends,
WE HAVE NOW ENTERED the great season of Lent. Lent comes around each year and presents us with its usual challenge to take stock of our lives, to see more clearly what is in our hearts, and to discover what might be calling us out of our comfort zones. It is a time for personal as well as group reflection, a time for entering into ‘the wilderness’ and grappling with the mysteries of life, as well as a time of preparation for Easter. 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, a time to make a fresh start.
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.
The wilderness (desert) is ever so real and at the same time symbolic. In Israel’s story, it is the place of testing for God’s people: ‘Remember the long way that your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness… testing you to know what was in your heart’ (Deut 8:2). In Matthew’s account, the ‘devil’ is the ‘tester’ or ‘tempter’, the instrument of God’s testing. In each instance, the test is expressed in terms of Jesus’ relationship to God: ‘If you are the son of God….’
Jesus passes the tests that the people of Israel have failed in the wilderness of Sinai. He refuses the way of special favor from God, the way of status or self-aggrandizement. He is prepared to suffer whatever it takes to bring healing and wholeness to a broken world. 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. Jesus demonstrates that he is indeed ‘of God’.
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, to control rather than to serve will continually challenge 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 freedom and peace, of love and compassion(CARITAS).
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.
