February 26th 2023. First Sunday of Lent

GOSPEL: Mt 4:1-11

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini broadcast on Vatican Radio

 

Don Fabio’s homily follows the Gospel

GOSPEL: Mt 4:1-11

At that time 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.”
He said in reply,
“It is written: One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”

Then the devil took him to the holy city,
and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him,
“Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
At this, Jesus said to him,
“Get away, Satan!
It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship
and him alone shall you serve.”

Then the devil left him and, behold,
angels came and ministered to him.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

 

1. Lent is not a journey of perfectionism, but a journey towards divine sonship

As always, Lent is a long, profound and useful preparation for Easter. Easter is new life, entrance into the Kingdom, the gift of the resurrection, eternal life according to divine sonship. However, Easter is not just at the end of the journey. Along the way, in texts like the one we read on Sunday, we already experience the entrance into new life and the leaving behind of the old. Lent is not about individual perfectionism, but a journey of liberation towards union with God. Ash Wednesday shows us that our point of departure is our weakness and poverty and from this we are invited into the new life of grace that is only possible with God. Traditionally we read the Gospel passage of the three temptations. This is prepared by the first reading telling of the original Fall and humanity’s propulsion of itself along a self-destructive path. Man starts out attempting to be like God but ends up in a state of shame, in a bad relationship with his own body.

 

2.The three temptations are all temptations to reject the fatherhood of God. They take three forms: temptations of the appetites, temptations of the mind, and temptations for material possessions. They correspond to the admonition to love God with heart (appetite), mind and actions (material things).

Why do these temptations have to occur? There is a happy ambiguity in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and English with the term “to prove”. The word means two things at the same time. On the one hand it means to have certainty – proof – of something. On the other hand, it refers to the process of being tested, of being put to the proof. In order to prove something, that something must be proven, tested. Moments of being tested, of being challenged, are important and useful because they cause those things that are inconsistent in our lives to collapse. This fourth chapter of Matthew cannot be understood apart from the baptism of Christ that is described beforehand. Indeed, the verse immediately preceding Sunday’s Gospel recounts the voice of the Father: “Here is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”. In the desert, Satan puts this assertion up for discussion, “If you are really the Son of God. . .” This is the form of every temptation. It always calls our sonship into question. “Is God really a father to me?” The three temptations recall the first and greatest of the commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength”. There is that which we desire, that which we think, and that which we do. This is where our sonship plays itself out. This is where the meaning and quality of our lives is located.

 

3. The appetites are at the root of our passions. To live according to bodily desires is infantile and degenerate. God calls us to live according to higher and more noble desires, the desires of children of the Father.

The first temptation concerns the appetites, which are always at the root of our passions according to the great Evagrio Pontico. Our nobility is in great measure based on our appetites. Whoever becomes a slave of his appetites becomes degenerate, infantile. To live (as many do) in order to satisfy the appetites is a complete absurdity. In reality we ought to eat in order to live – the exact opposite. Satan tempts us to transform everything into bread, into compensation, gratification. The true Son of God, however, shows us the way to Easter: we cannot live for such little things. It is not by bread alone that man lives. The word “alone” is very important. In the story of the Prodigal Son, the son realizes that he has a much greater dignity. He sees that eating the food of pigs is so much beneath eating in the house of the father. Lent is not a question of fasting for fasting’s sake, but fasting in order to eat better. It is a question of moving from infantile desires for satisfaction to adult desires, the desires of children of God for true greatness. Children too, and young people, have noble desires, not just desires for entertainment. They long for the heroic, the meaningful, to give themselves in sacrifice. Let us pass to these desires that are typical of the children of God, to turn to God to be nurtured and satisfied! In the Our Father we say, “Give us this day our daily bread”. To live according to God’s providence today and to reject a life lived according to an infantile and immature flitting from one moment of satisfaction to the next.

 

4. The second temptation is that of relying on our mental illusions instead of on the providence of God. The final temptation is to seek our security in material things instead of in the sovereignty of God.

In the second temptation, Christ is taken to a great pinnacle and tempted to force the hand of God. This temptation corresponds to the admonition to love God with our entire mind. How often we are enamoured by an idea or a hypothesis, and we wish to force God to comply with our way of thinking. How often we think that one of our projects will resolve everything, but it was in the end nothing more than our own idea, fatally reliant on our limited perspective. Jesus responds to Satan saying that we do not put God to the test. Instead, we trust him. Too often we intervene in things when what we really need to do is trust and wait for the Lord to act in his own time. The final temptation concerns our fixation with material things, living for our possessions (this corresponds to the admonition to love the Lord with our entire strength, in everything that we do). We enslave ourselves, bowing down to the things of this world. The temptation is to abandon the greatness of our relationship with God in favour of more material security. Jesus replies, “To one only should we bow down. One only merits our adoration and service”. This is an adult act of liberation from the servitudes of this world. What a beautiful time! Through fasting, through prayer (which is our self-opening to the plan of God), and through almsgiving (which subtracts us from the threat of possessiveness), this period transforms itself into the great time of Easter. By means of these three battles, we can become free, free from the dependency on our appetites, free from mental delusions, free from the powers of this world.

 

Alternative homily

 When Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden, Satan was using the same strategy that he would use once again with Jesus in the desert. One of the traps hidden in every temptation is the false idea that fidelity to God is incompatible with fidelity to ourselves. In other words, the idea that obeying God means hurting yourself, curtailing yourself, diminishing yourself. The reality is the exact opposite: sin is the tragic road to self-destruction. Temptation makes us pursue an idolatrous image of ourselves which is at odds with the true dignity and beauty that God has given us. In order to follow that image, we are encouraged to make ourselves the focal point of our lives and the masters of our own destiny. The three temptations of Jesus in the desert share similar characteristics to the temptation in the garden. Through these temptations, Satan tries to tell Jesus that it is ok for the Son of God to exploit objects to satisfy his own needs; he is told that God ought to be ready to facilitate and support his most frivolous decisions; he is assured that possessions and worldly power are a worthy goal in themselves. Temptations such as these alienate us from our true identity as children of God. They make us feel inadequate and dissatisfied with who we are and with what we possess. They make us lose sight of our deepest identity. In place of that identity, they set up a deceitful image of the human being as an absolute in himself, absolute in his individual rights, and in the way he can manipulate things for his own ends. Satan encourages us not to accept our condition as creatures of God. His temptations proceed by making us feel ashamed and inadequate for who we are. The Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving help restore us to the right relationship with God that can be destroyed through temptation. The sobriety, generosity and walking in right relationship with God that are typical of Lent restore us to our proper place in creation. They fill us with the peace, freedom and beauty that are integral to our true identity as God’s children.