The First Sunday in Lent (Fr. Robinson)

During the service in a church where the choir was seated in the balcony, one of the ladies singing in the choir leaned over the balcony rail to see who came in late. She leaned too far and would have toppled to the floor had her foot not caught on the railing. There she hung with her skirts around her head.

The preacher saw the spectacle and shouted, “Whoever looks back will be struck blind!" After a moment one fellow whispered to the guy beside him, “I’m going to risk one eye.”

On this first Sunday in Lent the subject of the Gospel is temptation—specifically the temptation of our Lord in the wilderness. This account not only gives us insight into Jesus’ earthly life, but also into the nature of temptation itself, and how we might best deal with temptation as it comes our way. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus was “in every way tempted as we are yet did not sin.” 

Oscar Wilde, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, said that the “only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." We’re all very familiar with that way of dealing with temptation. But Jesus was tempted and did not yield. When we say in the Creed that Jesus is God and Man, part of what it meant for him to take up our humanity was to experience what we all experience in being tempted. Thus, he knows from personal experience what we have to face.

We’re told by both St. Matthew and St. Luke what at least three of those temptations were. They occurred just as he was preparing to begin his earthly ministry. It makes sense that Satan would be especially active at this critical time in Jesus’ life. An important decision had to be made. What path would he take? Would he be a social reformer, devoted to stamping out hunger, making life better for the disadvantaged? He had great compassion for those who suffer in any way. Wouldn’t it be good to devote his time, talent, and power to alleviate suffering?

Yet, his purpose was much higher than that. God the Father had sent him to redeem the world. So he answered Satan with the words of scripture: “One does not live by bread alone." The devil didn’t tempt Jesus to do something morally wrong. He tempted him to do something good, but less than his calling.

The tempter often doesn’t tempt us to do something that’s obviously evil. Instead, he would divert us from our primary task by calling us away to some other worthy cause. The tempter might say, “You really are too busy with important things to take any time for prayer. Yes, of course prayer might make you more aware of God’s will for your life, but you just can’t fit it in. Whatever the choice might be, the tempter is working to lure us to choose a path that will make us be less than we can be, and do for others less than we can do.

The second temptation, according to St. Luke, was for raw power. The devil showed Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. They could all be his if he would worship him. Here the devil has clearly shown himself and revealed his purpose. He wants to be worshipped. His goal is to be in God’s place. There have been people in every age, and there certainly are in our own day, who literally worship the devil. They use religious rites; make animal, and sometimes human, sacrifices; and they promote evil of all varieties.

Yet, these aren’t the only devil worshippers. There are devil worshippers who don’t even know it, who have sold their souls to him by the way they live their lives. They’re in every walk of life, at every level of society. They’ll do anything it takes to have whatever they want, be it in politics, religion, medicine, art, science. Perhaps they started on their path innocently enough, with small deceptions, small thefts, little manipulations, but eventually it became a way of life. 

Finally, Jesus was tempted to throw himself down from the temple, to prove that the Father would protect him and to show everyone without a doubt who he was. During his earthly ministry Jesus would perform some amazing miracles, including calming a storm and walking on water. But here he was being tempted to put God the Father to the test and he chose not to do that, again through the words of scripture: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”

To have thrown himself down from the temple would have been an effort to manipulate the Father. We’re tempted sometimes to do the same thing. We can use prayer that way, bargaining with God to get what we want. “If I get that raise, God, I’ll give a tenth to the Church, and I’ll even start going to church!" But God will not be manipulated, and in our prayer we should strive always to pray according to that principle which Jesus taught us in his prayer: “Thy will be done.”

The temptations of Christ are instructive because they capture how the tempter seeks to influence the life of every person. They show how subtle the devil can be. He even quotes scripture. And often, as was the case with Jesus’ first temptation, the devil never shows himself. He’s most effective when we’re not aware of his presence and he’s never happier than when someone doesn’t even believe he exists, which is the prevailing attitude in our day. His temptations are most effective when we don’t even realize we’re being tempted.

These temptations happen to have come after Jesus had spent 40 days and 40 nights fasting and praying in the wilderness. He was spiritually prepared for that attack through prayer. He also was obviously well-schooled in the scriptures. He knew what the scriptures said and could quote scripture appropriately in response to temptation.

We need to be spiritually prepared for temptation by regular prayer, frequent reception of the Sacrament, and daily reading and study of the Holy Scriptures. How can we begin to know what God wants of us unless we put ourselves regularly and frequently in his presence? Yes, we fall from time to time, but Jesus has given us a model to follow that, through his grace, will enable us to withstand in times of trial.
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“As thou with Satan didst contend, and didst the victory win, O give us strength in thee to fight, in thee to conquer sin.”