May Jesus Christ be
praised and may his holy Mother pray for us.
So what did you give
up? This is the question that always
accompanies the beginning of Lent. When
I was a child, this conversation always took place in the days surrounding Ash
Wednesday. One child when asked
responded, “I gave up chewing gum.” That
always met with an approving nod from the rest of us. Another child said, “ice cream.” Admirable, we thought. And then one kid, there was always one kid
who would outdo all of us:
“Television.” And then, only a
reverent silence would fall over the conversation. We had been bested – he gave up TV. He loved God more and that was that. For as far as we understood you gave up
something to prove your love for God.
That’s what Lent was all about – proving our love for God by giving up
something we valued.
Not at all, dear
brothers and sisters, that’s not it at all.
Whatever we give up, whatever acts of self-denial we make or additional
spiritual practices we take up are not really opportunities for us to show our
love for God. They are additional
opportunities for God to show his love for us.
In our fasting, prayer, and acts of charity we join with the Lord Jesus
in his time of fasting in the desert. We
join with the poor of the world and the poor of our community both by
physically eating less, remembering those who do not have enough to eat, and by
the alms that we give. In our time of
prayer, united to fasting and almsgiving, our minds and our souls will be
turned more and more toward our loving Father.
And the love of God our Father, shown to us in the Lord Jesus and made
present to us in the power of the Holy Spirit will transform us and renew
us. That is the great gift of Lent. It is a time of transformation and renewal. It is a time for us to give up some things
that we don’t need, and receive some things that we do.
Usually by the first
Sunday of Lent, we have settled on, or negotiated to, what it is that we are
giving up for Lent. We know what we are giving up to the Lord. Today, my dear brothers and sisters, we look
to the example that the Lord Jesus is giving up to us this Lenten season. Following his baptism by John in the Jordan
River the Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. The devil’s plan of attack, the process of
temptation, had not changed since he tempted our first parents in the Garden of
Eden. He tempts the Lord Jesus to doubt
his own identity, “If you are the Son of God . . .” he says, then show your
power. The way that the Lord Jesus
rejected these temptations, is the example that he is giving up to us the Lent.
After forty days of
fasting in the desert, Jesus was presented with three temptations. In the first, the devil tempts the hungry
Jesus to use his power to turns the stones into bread. In the second, the devil temps Jesus to throw
himself off of the parapet of the temple, forcing God to send angels to protect
him. And in the third temptation, the
devil offers all the kingdoms of the world to Jesus in exchange for worshipping
and serving him rather than the Father.
In rejecting these
three temptations, Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, turned to the words of the
Scriptures. There is power in the Word. But more than that, the Lord Jesus recognized
the lie in each temptation. The devil,
the father of lies, lied to our first parents and they were deceived. He said to Eve that if they ate the fruit of
the tree, they would be like god. The
lie was my dear brothers and sisters that they already were like God. They already were, because they were created
in His image and likeness. In every
temptation that the devil presents to us, there is a lie that promises us
something that he cannot give. Jesus
recognized the lie in each temptation.
He recognized that power, especially sacred power, used selfishly,
denied the providence of our loving Father. Jesus recognized he could not misuse his body
by throwing it off the temple, because his body, just like our bodies, was made
to be a gift. And Jesus recognized the
lie that worldly riches were better than a divine relationship, a life of
loving obedience as the beloved child of the Father.
As we celebrate this
Eucharist today, and we bring the first fruits of our Lenten sacrifices to the
Altar, let us receive the gift that the Lord Jesus offers to us. Let us ask for the grace to reject every
assault of the devil that would ask us to deny that we are beloved children of
the Father. May we turn our hearts and
minds in these days to the power resident in the Word of God. And let us ask for the grace to recognize the
lie of the evil one and embrace the Truth of the Holy One, and live our days by
every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Amen.
Preached
at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Monroe, NC
