FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT
In earlier Christian days Lent was a preparation for baptism and for reconciliation to the church after public penance. This fact caused the selection of most readings. Other readings were conditioned by the papal station masses. Much of this has been changed in the new Missal. Yet, the first two Sundays are still meant for penitents and all Sundays still prepare for baptism. But by and large the readings form a preparation of the faithful for Easter.
The first readings, taken from the Old Testament, focus on Israel’s salvation history as presupposition, preparation and prefigurement of the redemption by Christ: Moses (first and third Sunday), Abraham (second Sunday), Joshua (fourth Sunday).
The second readings usually refer to the gospels and expound the believer’s participation in Christ’s death and resurrection by baptism and by our Christian life.
The gospel theme of the first two Sundays is in all three years the temptation and transfiguration of Jesus (penitential themes); and the gospel of the third, fourth and fifth Sunday of the Year C speak about penance and Christ’s mercy toward sinners.
We are tempted in our life, but are victorious by faith, is the theme of this first Sunday. So it was with Christ (gospel). Bringing the first fruits of a harvest to the priest after entering the Promised Land, a Jew was bound to male a confession of faith (first reading). As Christians we live by confessing Christ as lord, having died and risen for us (second reading).
First Reading: Deuteronomy
26:4-10
The Book of Deuteronomy contains three discourses of Moses (1:1-4:43; 4:44-28:68; with the addition of chapter 28; 29-30) and some appendices in 31-34. The bulk of Part II (4:44-28:69) is taken up by the Deuteronomic Code (12:1-26:19), at the end of which we have some ritual prescriptions (26:1-19). In 26:1-11 we find the regulations concerning first fruits.
Probably on the festival of spring Azymes the first sheaves of barley were offered. This was the occasion for the confession of faith we have in today’s first reading. God had promised to Abraham to give the Israelites the land (Gen 12:1-3). The possession of the land was the fulfillment of this promise. And thus the offering of the first fruits made the Israelites aware that fertility did not come from the fertility of the cult and thus from Baal, but from Yahweh. This creedal form, which we find in other places also (Jos 24:2-13; Deut 6:20-25), sketches the main phases of salvation history and thus the thread of Pentateuchal history: God promised to make Abraham the Father of many nations and that in him all nations should be blessed. The execution was slow in coming. Jacob had to go to Egypt. The Israelites were oppressed by the Egyptians. The Lord freed them from slavery, brought them to the Promised Land and there made them a great nation.
The fruits the Jews were harvesting each year were proof that God continued his blessings. The exodus event was the resurrection and birthday of the Jews as a people. This act of God we commemorate when we celebrate our Easter night when Christ rises from the dead.
It was a great disappointment and sorrow for Paul that his own fellow Jews hardened their heart and did not believe in Christ. Thus he asks in the Pauline Theodicy (Rom 9-11) how one can reconcile this disbelief with God’s promise of salvation. The apostle’s answer is: (1) The infidelity of the Jews is not contrary to the way God rules history (Rom 9:1-32). (2) The infidelity of the Jews comes from their sinful refusal (Rom 10:1-20). (3) The infidelity of the Jews is only partial and transitory (Rom 11:1-36).
Today’s second reading is taken from the second part of this Theodicy: (a) Israel despised God’s salutary justice (10:1-4), which was announced especially in the Old Testament (10:5-11). (b) Israel had enough light to believe (10:12-17). (c) Israel is inexcusable (10:18-20). For the Jews in the Old Testament, one could argue, justice meant fulfillment of the works of Moses; and that was too hard for a person to accomplish. But Paul answers: In reality Moses did not only speak about the justice of the law but also the justice of faith. Thus the Jews could have known it. This the apostle proves from Deut 30:11-14: “This commandment, which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” Therefore justice of faith is not hard to obtain. One does not have to do mountain climbing or ocean diving. The law of God can be reduced to the one commandment to love God (Deut 30:10). It has come down to us. It is written in your heart (Jer 31:31f). Thus Paul can refer to Deuteronomy to show that already Moses had said that justice comes from faith
And as the law was in reach of every Jew since it was written in their hearts, so is Christian faith easy to obtain, involving no such insurmountable obstacles as ascending to heaven, to bring down Christ, the object of faith, or descending into the deep, into the grave, to bring Christ again from the dead, i.e. to believe that Christ the object of faith descended there. Since Christ descended from heaven and became incarnate, since he died and was buried and rose again for our salvation, we do not have to ascend into heaven not to descend into the abode of the dead to work out the redemption, which Christ has already worked for us: the incarnation and Resurrection have already been accomplished for us, our justification is easy, provided we believe in Christ incarnate, dead and risen.
As we saw the other years, the temptations of the Lord are reported in all three Synoptic gospels, and we may find an insinuation of them even in John: Jn 6:31: Christ is asked to give the miraculous bread; Jn 6:15: The Lord is tempted since the Jews want to make him king; Jn 7:3: The relatives of Jesus wants to persuade him to go to Jerusalem to show his power. This would be the sequence of the temptations in Luke. Mark, as we saw, has a short summary, Matthew and Luke elaborate on three temptations. The first (changing stones into bread) is the same in both gospels, the sequence of the second and third is different in Matthew and Luke: Luke has a second temptation of Christ in the desert, where the devil shows him all kingdoms (in Matthew it is from a mountain), and the third in Luke is the temptation on the pinnacle of the temple. Matthew has the other sequence: Temple, mountain. Apparently both depended on a common source, which both changed according to their respective theology. It is hard to say, who of the two comes closer to the original source. Luke may have changed the sequence since for him Jerusalem is the center of his gospel where it starts and ends; Matthew may have changed the sequence since for him great events take place on a mountain.
Besides the change of the sequence of the second and the third temptation there are some other light changes in Luke: (1) Stressed is still more than in Matthew and Mark that Jesus is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Full of the Spirit he returns from the Jordan (Lk 4:1) and is led by the Spirit into the desert (Luke softens the strong Marcan expression: “the spirit threw him into the desert”). (2) Jesus is apparently tempted for forty days (he is not only fasting for forty days [Matthew even says forty days and forty nights] ). But this being tempted for forty days, which also Mark seems to indicate is not absolutely clear. If it was the case then the three mentioned temptations would be only the climax of the many temptations. (3) After the first temptation Jesus answers: “Not from bread alone lives man”, omitting the second half: “but from the word of God” in Matthew. Thus the devil does not bring a quotation from scripture in Luke’s second temptation as he does in Matthew’s second temptation. (4) The second temptation in Luke concerning all kingdoms shows the slyness of the devil more than in Matthew. The devil apparently is very modest and unselfish by stressing Christ’s position: “To you (stands right at the beginning of the sentence) I will give (takes only second place) all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me (even this looks like modesty: The devil has been appointed prince of this world by God, for a certain time as John makes clear [John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11])…if you will worship, (comes almost at the very end), it shall be yours.” So the you of the Lord stands stressed also at the end of the sentence. As if the devil wanted to say: “You can see, I require only very little from you for the power over all kingdoms. (5) At the end of the three temptations Luke adds: “And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time (4:13).” That hints to the return of Satan for Christ’s passion; in particular the betrayal of Judas was instigated by the devil. Only Luke reports before the last supper when Judas is making plans of how to hand the Lord over to the Sanhedrin: “Then Satan took possession of Judas (Lk 22:3).
THE MEANING OF
TEMPTATIONS
Our life is a time of temptations. And thus especially Lent presents itself to us as a time to meditate.
I. On the importance of temptations in general.
1. One of the most precious gifts God has given to us is our free will. Whatever we do, we shall do freely. God does not want to force and scrupulously avoids forcing us. This is the great difference between man and animal. An animal does things by instinct and thus no free choice. A man can decide in favor of God or against him. Whatever we promised the Lord we must offer freely (Deut 23:24). And whenever we give something to our neighbors we “ must give it freely and not with ill will” (Deut 15:10).”
2. Since we are creatures, our greatness consists in doing God’s will freely, in obeying him with all our heart. But we can be tempted not to do his will, but our own. There is first our own passion, which tempts us, our evil impulse: “The tug and lure of his own passion tempt every man (James 1:14).” Original sin has destroyed the wonderful harmony in man between intellect and will so that our concupiscence can grow wild and rebellious.
3. Man is tempted by the devil. Such a temptation has something hostile about it since the devil wants us to rebel against God and make us fall. This is clear in the Book of Job where Satan is up to make Job curse God. But after Job has lost all his cattle, sheep and children, he still says: “Naked I came forth my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).” And after Satan has struck with an incurable disease, Job still prays: “We accept good things from God. Should we not accept evil (Job 2:10)?” And only when his friends come and have no consolation for him does he curse the day he was born (“Perish the day on which I was born, the night when they said, ‘The child was a boy’”) he does not curse God himself.
According to Wisdom 2:24, Adam and Eve were tempted by the devil in paradise, for he envied them in their happiness and wanted to make them fall and succeeded.
4. But even more, man is tempted by God Himself. James 1:13 is no contradiction to this statement: “No one is tempted is free to say, ‘I am being tempted by God.’ Surely God, who is beyond the grasp of evil, tempts no one.” God does not tempt us with the intention to make us fall, as the devil does, but he tests to see if we freely put him above everything and to make our free service firmer.
a. God tested Abraham to see if he loved him above everything more
even than his only son Isaac. The Lord had promised the patriarch to make him the father of a great nation and that in him all nations should be blessed (Gen 12:1-3: “Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your Father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you…All the communities of the earth shall find blessings in you.”) But how could that be if he would sacrifice his only son? And yet Abraham did not hesitate to go to Mt. Moriah in order to sacrifice Isaac. And when he was about to sacrifice his son, God told the patriarch: Do not lay your hand on the boy. I know how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son (Gen 22:12).”
b. God tested the Jews in the desert, to see if they would observe his commandments. “Moses answered to the people, ‘Do not be afraid, for God has come to you and out his fear upon you, lest you should sin’ (Ex 20:20).” And in Deut 8:2, Moses puts it the same way: “Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments.” As a matter of fact, these temptations are similar to the temptations of Christ.
c. Temptations have an educative value. They want to bring man out of a boy and the lady out of a girl. This idea is expressed especially in the Wisdom Books: “My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials” (Sir 2:1), Jesus Sirach tells us. And that same author goes on: “No evil can harm the man who fears the Lord; through trials, again and again he is safe” (Sir 33:1). “A man with training gains wide knowledge; a man of experience speaks sense. One never put to the test knows little” (sir 25:9f). In other words, what training and experience does for the knowledge, trials do for the rounding out of a personality. Sir 2:5 sums up: “For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in temptations.”
II. Thus we are not surprised that Jesus himself was tempted and thus tested. The letter to the Hebrews tells us again and again that Jesus is a man like us.
1. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet never sinned” (Heb 4:15). Since he was himself tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are tempted: (Heb 2:18).
For the author of the letter to the Hebrews, Jesus was mainly tempted in the Garden of Gethsemani. And if temptation means being tested if one can obey God, Christ learned obedience through his suffering. His nature revolted against the horrible death of crucifixion so that he was even sweating blood, but he accepted crucifixion as expression of the Father’s and his own love for mankind. Here is the formulation of Heb 5:7-9: “In the days when he was in the flesh, he (Christ) offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to God, who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and when perfected, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”
2. We may assume that Christ was tempted all his life, as we are too. A hint for this we find in Lk 22:28 where Jesus tells his apostles: “You are the ones who have stood loyally by me in my temptations.” That the three temptations, mentioned in today's gospel and in the parallel report of Matthew were not the only temptations of Jesus is made clear by Luke, stating after the last temptation: "When the devil had finished all the tempting he left him, to await another opportunity" (Lk 4:13). That other opportunity came when Judas was about to betray the Lord. "Then Satan took possession of Judas, the one called Iscariot, a member of the Twelve. He went off to confer with the chief priests and officers about a way to hand him over to them" (Lk 22:3-4), says that same evangelist Luke before the Last Supper. Satan wanted to make Christ fall, to abandon his mission as Savior of mankind and not to accept crucifixion, or to be crushed by it.
3. This then is also the essence of the three temptations portrayed in today's gospel. The temptations came from without, penetrating the imagination of Jesus, but Satan did not appear in visible form nor was Jesus moved from place to place. Satan wanted to undermine Jesus' full acceptance of the will of the Father.
a. After Jesus had fasted for forty days, it was normal to be hungry and why should it not be allowed to use his power to perform miracles to change the stones in the desert into bread to have something to eat. But Christ knew that he could not use his Messianic power for his own satisfaction. He also knew that we can easily overstress the social life and neglect the spiritual life. Certainly we shall help the poor, we shall alleviate their plight; but the gospel, the word of God comes first. We shall trust in the Father and look for the kingdom of God, do God's will, then everything else will be given us besides.
b. Christ was not a glutton. So the devil thought he could seduce him to look for political power just by taking this power over kingdoms from the devil. But the Lord knew our true greatness consists in adoring God and serving him alone. The prince of this world is only tolerated for a short while. True greatness does not consist in lording it over somebody but in serving: God and others. And yet, it is so human, so tempting to boss other people around to use religious means for political purposes. But lastly we shall sacrifice our ambitions, and this meant for Christ dying on the cross. But because of this the Father made him Lord of Lords and subjected all kingdoms to him.
c. The devil lastly tried to tempt Christ to presumption by telling him to jump down from the Temple. Angels would carry Jesus on their hands so that nothing could happen to him. We can easily tell God how to run the world and expect impossible things from him, not doing our share and then only expecting his help. Christ was told to bypass passion and crucifixion, to perform a show miracle and thus win his followers over to him. But the Lord knew that only full dedication to God's will has God's special love and protection, he was fully aware that he should take upon himself passion and death on the cross. We cannot force success to happen in our life, but have to leave it up to the Lord what he will send us. Our life is not necessarily the fulfillment of all our hopes and dreams, is not always complete unfolding of all our talents. It might be that God crosses something out in our life. And this makes us really great, if we accept it in complete obedience.
4. And there is lastly still something we can learn from Christ, i.e. how to behave in temptations. Eve argued with the devil and fell. Christ did not argue with him but relied on God's word in Scripture. It is good to have such short sayings of Scripture at hand in times of temptations. We have to think over our stand long before temptations come. We may not even have the strength to reason out things when temptations and hardships come, especially when we are suffering much are even physically weakened by suffering.