Gospel & Reflection for the First Sunday of Lent.
Luke 4:1-13
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry. Then the devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.’ But Jesus replied, ‘Scripture says: Man does not live on bread alone.’
Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, ‘I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Scripture says:
You must worship the Lord your God,
and serve him alone.’
Then he led him to Jerusalem and made him stand on the parapet of the Temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said to him ‘throw yourself down from here, for scripture says:
He will put his angels in charge of you
to guard you,
and again:
They will hold you up on their hands
in case you hurt your foot against a stone.’
But Jesus answered him, ‘It has been said:
You must not put the Lord your God to the test.’
Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.
Reflection
Friends, ‘Close to the next Moment: Interviews For A Changing Ireland’ was a book published in 2010. It is a collection of interviews with people across the Irish political, literary and art divide. It chronicles how those interviewed viewed our country in the first decade of the new millennium. They answered questions such as What are Irish values? How have they changed? and How do new cultural realities affect the old ones? Interviewees included Gerry Adams, Roddy Doyle, Alice Maher, and Seamus Heaney, among many others.
In his chapter, the late Poet Seamus Heaney describes one of the biggest changes of his lifetime as centring on people’s disassociation with faith and the decline of religious practice. He describes it as “the evaporation of the transcendent from all our discourse and our sense of human destiny.” “More bewildering still,” he added, “this evaporation of the transcendent means that we are exiled into a universe with no up or down, no internalised system of moral longitude or latitude, no sense of a metaphysical roof over our heads.”
In his words, Heaney describes accurately and regretfully, how a lack of belief in something greater than ourselves has quickly dismantled our framework and structure for not only our understanding on the meaning of life, but also has malfunctioned our once reliable moral compass, leaving people with no sense of direction or confidence to look beyond themselves and this world.
Many people now focus their lives on the here and now because the greater perspective, the direction and hope once given through faith and belief has faded from their lives. Many do not want faith spoken of in public and most certainly do not want religious beliefs to influence important decisions, laws, and the direction of our society. This dismissal of the sacred, but the embrace of the relative, has only drawn society further into a wilderness of loneliness and despair.
In our Gospel for this first Sunday of Lent, we listened to the tempting of the Lord by the devil, in the wilderness. Interestingly, the word ‘devil’ comes to us from the Greek word ‘diabolos’ meaning ‘to break asunder,’ or to ‘pull apart.’ Therefore, an attempt was being made to break asunder Jesus’ will as He tried to do what God was asking of Him. A bid was made to pull apart His perspective, direction, and hope in God. All those efforts failed.
Friends, the great and sacred season of Lent is our time of remembering or maybe even, salvaging, the larger perspective of life. It is our time to re-orientate ourselves to our universe with an up and down, to re-discover our inner moral longitude and latitude, and for seeking shelter under the metaphysical roof over our heads.
In short, Lent is our opportunity to draw once again close to God, and to resist and control anything that tries to break asunder our willingness to follow Him or anything that tries to pull apart the relationship and hope we have with Him.
Faith reminds us that life is not just the here and now, there is so much more to it. Life is not just about ‘me,’ how ‘I’ see things, or just that which is important for ‘me;’ life is us all, life is gift, life is transcendent. It reminds us that we are not cosmic accidents, with no purpose or destination. It assures us that we are created beings, made in God’s image and likeness. Our purpose is to live, love and follow His ways; and that the boundaries of this world are but a gateway to the world and life to come. The Lord Jesus resisted, fought, and triumphed over everything that tried to convince Him that none of that was true.
We now observe all the demands of Lent, so like the Lord, we too can affirm within ourselves all the truth and vision of our faith and belief in God and what is says about our lives and the world; and that it will strengthen us to resist anything that tries to break asunder that faith and hope we have in Him.
Fr. Richard
