Homily for the
1st Sunday of Lent
March 6, 2022
Luke 4: 1-13
St. Joseph Church, New Rochelle, N.Y.
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned
from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days, to be
tempted by the devil” (Luke 4: 1-2).
When Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, as we heard in the gospel back on Jan. 9, the Holy Spirit descended on him, and God the Father voiced his pleasure in this, his beloved Son. So Jesus of Nazareth as man is filled with the Spirit of God to do what he, as God’s Son, came down to earth to do.
It may surprise us that the 1st thing the
Spirit prompts Jesus to do is to go out into the desolate wilderness of
southern Judea, a dry, barren wasteland of sand and rock, perhaps less
hospitable than California’s famous Death Valley. We presume that Jesus went there to be alone
with his Father, to pray, to ponder what his Father’s plan for him was.
St. Luke tells us explicitly that the Spirit
led him “into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” In Christian tradition, and perhaps other
religious traditions, the wilderness is the domain of evil spirits. No surprise, then, that under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit Jesus should encounter the Devil there.
The 2d temptation that Jesus faces states, further,
that “all the kingdoms of the world, all their power and glory,” belong to the
Evil One (4:6). A common Christian
phrase associates “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” In that sense, the whole material world is a
desert that is to a huge extent ruled by Satan, a desert where all the
followers of Christ must encounter him and deal with his temptations—always
accompanied by the Holy Spirit that God the Father and God the Son bestow upon
us.
There are literary tales of people who do what Jesus was tempted to do: sell themselves to the devil in return for the power and glory of the world. You may be familiar with the story of Dr. Faust, dramatized by Christopher Marlowe in the 1590s and by Goethe in 1808, composed operatically by Gounod and Berlioz in the 19th century and as a Broadway musical, Damn Yankees, in 1955. Stephen Vincent Benet in 1937 turned the tale into a short story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster”—that’s the Daniel Webster after whom our Webster Ave. and Daniel Webster School are named; Thomas Mann wrote a novel on the Faust theme in 1947. Many other writers and composers have adapted it thru the centuries. Sometimes we say that such-and-such a politician has sold his soul to the Devil in order to attain power. We might think Vladimir Putin has sold his soul in the pursuit of more and more power, more and more wealth, more and more Russian glory—regardless of the death and destruction he causes.
Jesus went into the desert for 40 days. In the Bible, “‘Forty days’ is a conventional
expression denoting a time of solemn preparation.”[1] Moses was alone with God on Mt. Sinai for 40
days (Ex 24:18). Elijah walked for 40
days from Israel to Mt. Horeb to meet God there (1 Kings 19:8). Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days
between his resurrection and his ascension (Acts 1:3).
And we have entered 40 days of Lent. Moses, Elijah, and Jesus fasted for their 40
days. (Sundays have never been part of
the 40 days—no fasting today! Enjoy some
cake and ice cream.) We don’t fast as
strictly now as we used to in our Latin Rite Catholicism; the Eastern Churches
are still quite strict about it. But we
do undertake a season of prayer and penance, symbolized by the ashes daubed on
us last Wednesday, by the purple vestments we’ll wear until Holy Thursday.
What are we preparing for in these 40 days of
penance? Easter. Catechumens and others are preparing to enter
the Catholic Church thru Baptism, Confirmation, and first Eucharist. We who are already baptized are preparing to
renew our baptismal commitment to Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we examine our lives, the temptations that face us, our sinful
inclinations, and we pray for God to rule our hearts, our thoughts, our
actions, as he did the life and actions of Jesus. We don’t have to be a Faust or a Putin to be
making deals with the Devil. How often do
we focus on our own self-satisfaction, living for instant gratification—the temptation
that the Devil laid before Jesus in the form of bread? To what extent do we expect others to serve
us? Do we use people for our own
purposes? Do we expect a proper share
(whatever “proper” means) of worldly power, glory, and wealth, regardless of
how we attain it? Do we try to polish
our reputation or our self-esteem by attacking other people? That was the 2d temptation the Devil put to
Jesus.
The 3d temptation was to presume on God’s
protection in spite of reckless behavior.
It would be reckless of Jesus to throw himself down from the height of
the Temple, expecting God to save him from deadly injury (Luke 4:9-10),
wouldn’t it? But a lot of people engage
in reckless behavior—daring God to protect them—by drinking before driving, or
texting while driving; by having sexual relations outside marriage; by refusing
vaccination against a deadly disease without medical grounds for refusal; by going
to places or situations where they know they’ll face serious temptation. The most reckless behavior of all, however,
is to postpone our conversion—to tell ourselves that there’s always time to
repent of our sins, confess them, start to live the way that Jesus expects us
to live, and be ready for judgment.
We live in a wilderness called the 21st
century, where the Devil seeks to overpower us and control us. Jesus, however, stands with us. He and his Father have given us the same Holy
Spirit that went with him into the desert so that we might resist the Devil and
be faithful to the commitment to God that we made at Baptism.
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