Sunday, March 05, 2006
Of Things Divine: Temptation, the Devil and Me, Lent 1-C
Each year on the First Sunday of Lent the Church recalls Jesus’ 40-day retreat in the desert where he was tempted by Satan. Mark’s version of the Lord’s trials is the briefest of the three. There is no scriptural tête-à-tête. There is no specific number of temptations Jesus had to face. There is only the statement that Jesus went into the desert and was tempted by Satan.
Jesus came into the world as one like us in all things but sin. Jesus was divine, so there never was any desire in him to sin. Yet Satan’s own arrogance prevented him from knowing this. His pride, which was the reason he had fallen from grace in the first place, blinded him from recognizing that the Son of God was different from the rest of the human race.
How would the rest of us have done when confronted by Satan? Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden there is nothing more accurate than the fact that there comes a time when all of us must confront Satan face to face. And, each of us has something that is vulnerable to the lies of Satan. Our susceptibility stems from our own pride, or greed, or lust, or arrogance. Whatever it is, Satan knows what it is and will attack us from that angle time after time. He knows when we are most vulnerable and makes the temptation appear to be so logical, beautiful and beneficial, and the trap is set.
Once we fall prey to his trickery we become more susceptible to falling again even if we suffer pangs of guilt, especially if we derived some pleasure from our sin and cannot recognize where anyone got hurt by our self-indulgence. It’s like what the wicked queen in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe did to young Edmund when she gave him some Turkish Delight, a delectable sweet. Even though he wasn’t supposed to take anything from the queen, the taste was so delicious than all he longed for was more. He became putty in the queen’s hands because she provided a momentary pleasure that did not seem to be bad for the boy at all. Little did he know that he was slowly becoming the wicked queen’s pawn in her effort to rule Narnia.
Just the opposite of the way sin weakens our disposition for choosing good, our ability to resist temptation strengthens us. It makes us stronger for the next encounter with Satan. Like the saints of old, we discover true fortitude, a gift of the Holy Spirit, when we use godly courage, another gift of the Holy Spirit, to reject the advancement of Satan and his legions. Ask any individual who has faced addiction and found release by following a twelve-step program how rejecting their addiction just one time bolsters their resolve to do it again and again. But just because they courageously rejected temptation once, or twice, or a hundred times does not mean that Satan will give up. Nor does it mean that they will not succumb again in a moment of weakness.
One of the most often confessed sins is the lack of patience, but impatience in itself is not a sin. The sin lies in how we react to that lack of patience and exhibit our frustration or anger toward the source of our impatience. Patience is a virtue. It is not a bonus of Baptism, Confirmation, or even Holy Orders. Like all virtues, patience has to be developed by practicing it. Each time we are successful in practicing a particular virtue that virtue becomes more deeply imbedded into our character, and a wisdom develops that gives us insight into what we can and cannot justly expect from others. For example, by practicing patience we learn that it is only God’s expectations for which we are to strive and that God’s standard varies for each individual according personal capabilities. Therefore, it is pointless to let the way other people behave or do things cause us to display impatience in the form of curtness or anger. It is best left to God, who is probably even more impatient any of us than He is with the person who frustrates us.
One thing of which we can be assured is that just like Jesus we are not left to face temptation alone. God has made a promise that He would not abandon us or let us go down sinking. He wrote that promise across the sky in the form of a rainbow. Like Jesus, we are tended to by angels who assist us when facing temptation. They minister to us, reminding us of what is right and wrong, of what is good and what is evil. Some call it a conscience. Whatever it is, it is God taking a personal interest in our decisions that ultimately lead to a choice between life and death.
God loves us so much and wants us to choose Him over Satan each time we are tempted that He is actually bombarding us with the actual graces to make the right decision whenever Satan steps into our path. St. Paul insists that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” That God is present at every temptation and when we are commitying every sin is proof of the depth of His unfathomable love for us and that He has no intention of abandoning us to His Adversary, the Devil.
In addition to actual graces, He provides sanctifying graces through the sacraments that strengthen us to resist the luring of the Father of Lies. In Baptism, we are filled with His grace, His very life, as we are endeared to God as one of His own children. Today, we are nourished with the graces of the actual Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus that fortifies us and strengthens us for the battles we will face this week. God wants us to succeed. He wants us to wage this war courageously so that the death of His Son on the cross will not have been in vain. That’s why it is so important to assist at Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, and even daily if one is capable of doing that, and to go to Confession often.
In this season of Lent, we are called to conversion. We are to hear the Good News and repent. We begin by admitting that we have allowed ourselves to succumb to Satan’s temptation, his lies. In this liturgy, we are reminded that God’s ways are mercy and love for those who follow his statutes. With the way God loves us, we cannot be afraid of our past, afraid to confront our sins or afraid to change direction so that we are truer to the cross of His Son in this Holy Season as we look to the future of Easter joy … forever.
Jesus came into the world as one like us in all things but sin. Jesus was divine, so there never was any desire in him to sin. Yet Satan’s own arrogance prevented him from knowing this. His pride, which was the reason he had fallen from grace in the first place, blinded him from recognizing that the Son of God was different from the rest of the human race.
How would the rest of us have done when confronted by Satan? Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden there is nothing more accurate than the fact that there comes a time when all of us must confront Satan face to face. And, each of us has something that is vulnerable to the lies of Satan. Our susceptibility stems from our own pride, or greed, or lust, or arrogance. Whatever it is, Satan knows what it is and will attack us from that angle time after time. He knows when we are most vulnerable and makes the temptation appear to be so logical, beautiful and beneficial, and the trap is set.
Once we fall prey to his trickery we become more susceptible to falling again even if we suffer pangs of guilt, especially if we derived some pleasure from our sin and cannot recognize where anyone got hurt by our self-indulgence. It’s like what the wicked queen in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe did to young Edmund when she gave him some Turkish Delight, a delectable sweet. Even though he wasn’t supposed to take anything from the queen, the taste was so delicious than all he longed for was more. He became putty in the queen’s hands because she provided a momentary pleasure that did not seem to be bad for the boy at all. Little did he know that he was slowly becoming the wicked queen’s pawn in her effort to rule Narnia.
Just the opposite of the way sin weakens our disposition for choosing good, our ability to resist temptation strengthens us. It makes us stronger for the next encounter with Satan. Like the saints of old, we discover true fortitude, a gift of the Holy Spirit, when we use godly courage, another gift of the Holy Spirit, to reject the advancement of Satan and his legions. Ask any individual who has faced addiction and found release by following a twelve-step program how rejecting their addiction just one time bolsters their resolve to do it again and again. But just because they courageously rejected temptation once, or twice, or a hundred times does not mean that Satan will give up. Nor does it mean that they will not succumb again in a moment of weakness.
One of the most often confessed sins is the lack of patience, but impatience in itself is not a sin. The sin lies in how we react to that lack of patience and exhibit our frustration or anger toward the source of our impatience. Patience is a virtue. It is not a bonus of Baptism, Confirmation, or even Holy Orders. Like all virtues, patience has to be developed by practicing it. Each time we are successful in practicing a particular virtue that virtue becomes more deeply imbedded into our character, and a wisdom develops that gives us insight into what we can and cannot justly expect from others. For example, by practicing patience we learn that it is only God’s expectations for which we are to strive and that God’s standard varies for each individual according personal capabilities. Therefore, it is pointless to let the way other people behave or do things cause us to display impatience in the form of curtness or anger. It is best left to God, who is probably even more impatient any of us than He is with the person who frustrates us.
One thing of which we can be assured is that just like Jesus we are not left to face temptation alone. God has made a promise that He would not abandon us or let us go down sinking. He wrote that promise across the sky in the form of a rainbow. Like Jesus, we are tended to by angels who assist us when facing temptation. They minister to us, reminding us of what is right and wrong, of what is good and what is evil. Some call it a conscience. Whatever it is, it is God taking a personal interest in our decisions that ultimately lead to a choice between life and death.
God loves us so much and wants us to choose Him over Satan each time we are tempted that He is actually bombarding us with the actual graces to make the right decision whenever Satan steps into our path. St. Paul insists that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” That God is present at every temptation and when we are commitying every sin is proof of the depth of His unfathomable love for us and that He has no intention of abandoning us to His Adversary, the Devil.
In addition to actual graces, He provides sanctifying graces through the sacraments that strengthen us to resist the luring of the Father of Lies. In Baptism, we are filled with His grace, His very life, as we are endeared to God as one of His own children. Today, we are nourished with the graces of the actual Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus that fortifies us and strengthens us for the battles we will face this week. God wants us to succeed. He wants us to wage this war courageously so that the death of His Son on the cross will not have been in vain. That’s why it is so important to assist at Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, and even daily if one is capable of doing that, and to go to Confession often.
In this season of Lent, we are called to conversion. We are to hear the Good News and repent. We begin by admitting that we have allowed ourselves to succumb to Satan’s temptation, his lies. In this liturgy, we are reminded that God’s ways are mercy and love for those who follow his statutes. With the way God loves us, we cannot be afraid of our past, afraid to confront our sins or afraid to change direction so that we are truer to the cross of His Son in this Holy Season as we look to the future of Easter joy … forever.
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