During Mass, suddenly a cloud of smoke and sulfur poured out into the entire church, and Satan himself appeared in all his hideousness. The people ran screaming from the church except for one old fellow in the back. Satan, in a rage, stomped up to the fellow and extended himself to his full height and yelled at the man, “Don’t I frighten you?” The man looked calmly at him and replied, “Nope, not in the least.” Satan tried again to intimidate him. The man merely laughed at him, further enraging the prince of darkness. Satan was going to try another tactic when the man looked up with sympathy and said, “Please, Satan, I have been married to your sister for thirty years now.”
On the First Sunday in Lent we always have the famous temptation Gospel accounts. They are all very similar and they are a great way to start off Lent. First of all, they reveal why we have this forty day period to get ready for Easter. We, the baptized, each year take time to purify our lives so that we can rise again in Easter fresh and renewed. In the Gospel of the day, we have a good leader, Jesus. Another great leader was Alexander the Great who was just that – great. He never commanded his troops from a safe place, he always led his troops into battle. Jesus today does the same thing by leading us into battle and by going through it first, revealing the strategy of the enemy. I once saw a father do the daily blood sugar test by pricking his own finger first so that his son wouldn’t be scared of it. Jesus, in the same way, enters into the contest so that we know what is coming. Jesus shows us that the devil will assail us in three ways: the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
These temptations also show us another reason why Satan fell. Satan, too, was a son of God, not the Son of God but a very high angel, an Archangel, in charge of heavenly worship. His name, Lucifer, means light bearer.
First temptation: If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. How does this temptation affect us? This temptation is to become self-reliant. If you are a son, why would a son not trust his father to provide for him? Satan tempts Jesus to be an orphan, implying that you can’t trust God, you can’t rely on Him, you can only rely on yourself. God will not feed your hunger. He will not look after you. Isn’t this a strong temptation for us? I did it my way. If you want something done right, you must do it yourself. Do not trust God, do not believe. He is good and loves you. This very thing is a common temptation and has been so from the beginning of time. You can’t trust God. Satan didn’t believe that God was enough and therefore he fell. What areas of our lives are we trying to be self-sufficient? What areas of our life are we cheating to make work? We can’t follow the Law because it gets in our way. This is the sin we are being warned against in this temptation. It will be very real and it is an area to be purified.
Jesus gives us the antidote man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Do we not see that we draw breath this moment solely because God has allowed us to? We only live because our bodies follow a law. What if our heart stopped following the law of beating or the lungs stopped follow the law of breathing? Kaput. We can only live by the word of God.
Second temptation: The devil shows us all the kingdoms of the world and says, ‘I will give you all these if you but worship me.’ This seems way out there but it hit close to home. Many of us want to be recognized by others. We want others to think our accomplishments are great and worthy of praise and because of this, we can easily fall and hurt the people around us. We can live entirely in fantasy worlds that we rule. They can be ambitions to be powerful, they can be addictions, games we play, movies we watch. Pretty much all the time that we waste. Every word and action of our lives will be weighed in the scales. Do we have Godly ambitions or do we have a God-like ambition? I want to rule something. I want to be thought of as great. I want to be an idol to be worshipped. I worship idols. A good way to look at this is to write down how you spend your time and your money. It will show where your heart is and what you really worship. I was meditating on Scripture recently and it said that Jesus came for sinners, to eat with sinners not the righteous. I was thinking, “Am I comfortable with being a sinner?” I am not talking about being comfortable living in sin, but rather acknowledging who I really am, a person who needs God’s grace. I need Jesus to eat with me if I want to be saved. The truth is no, I want to be a person that doesn’t need to eat with Jesus but have occasional dates with Him. I am not okay with who I am, a son who needs God to be in my life. Jesus gives the antidote again: Worship the Lord alone. Are we okay with who we are? Do we even know who we are? Are we delusional about salvation, about our need for Jesus to eat with us? So what are we doing in Lent? Let us find out who we are, who we really worship.
Third temptation: Throw yourself down from the temple because God will raise you up. This sin is the sin of presumption. And it is quite prevalent in our lives. We can think, “It doesn’t matter what I do, God will forgive me. I don’t need to follow God’s law. I will be saved anyways.” It is pride and it is deadly. There is one thing to fall into sin through weakness but another to think that my sins are nothing. I can jump off the Ten Commandments and nothing happens to me. We are tempting the Lord’s mercy. We are not caring about eternal life and we really do not know God and his goodness. We have been tempted to think that the only goodness here is on earth and this is where the devil gets his number – 666. He has everything except his purpose, which is to worship God. Seven is the number of days in a week and the seventh is for the worship of God. Satan has everything earthly but forgot the purpose of its creation. The whole of the world is a sign of God’s love. It is very easy for us to get complacent and forget our need for salvation. Jesus’ antidote: you shall not tempt the Lord, your God. Are there ways in our lives that we are being presumptuous and tempting the Lord’s mercy? In Lent, it is important to make a good confession.
Jesus endured these temptations to show us the dangers we face in life. We are given Lent to purify our lives once again. Lent is a great and joyful time because all these things leave us slaves and Jesus wants us free to be all we can be. We need to take time, this Lent, to see what our idols are, see how we are presuming mercy instead of confessing our sin, and turn back to trust the Lord with all our heart.