First Sunday of Lent (A), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, February 25, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the First Sunday of Lent, A, Vigil
February 25, 2023

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy to have a chance to ponder with you the consequential conversation God wants to have with us tomorrow on the First Sunday of Lent. It’s a conversation in which we eavesdrop on Jesus’ dialogue with the devil in the desert, in which Jesus invites us to journey with him for his 40 days there to learn from him how to live well not just Lent but the entirety of Christian life. He seeks to strengthen us not just to fight against the temptations of the evil one but to choose and order our whole life to God.
• Permit me to say a few words about going into the desert with Jesus. Most of us have no desire at all to go to the desert, certainly for no more than a brief visit. At a spiritual level, however, we should always have a great love for the desert, because that’s where the Holy Spirit drove Jesus and where he seeks to lead us each Lent. Without Jesus, the desert is sterile and lifeless. But with Jesus, it becomes a place of great vitality. We see this in the famous prophecy of Ezekiel where the water from the temple trickles down into the Arabah desert and grows ultimately into a river, leading to all types of vegetation and aquatic life and restoring life to the Dead Sea. That’s a symbol of the living water from Christ’s pierced side that begins to well up in us through prayer and the sacraments. To go into the desert with Christ is not a sterile exercise, but one that is meant to bring life even to those places within us that seem to be most lifeless. The problem is that going into the state of the desert, even with Christ, is increasingly difficult for people today. Removing ourselves from distractions, from cell phones, televisions, computers, car radios, newspapers, podcasts, social media scrolls, and the various things that crowd our lives with so much noise is increasingly difficult today. We’re so connected that if we are out of cell phone range we can easily feel totally lost. The first temptation we face each Lent is to resist or refuse to go into the desert with Christ, to think that our Lent can be complete if, for example, all we do is give up are sweets and booze. The first big hurdle is for us to hear Christ’s voice from the desert saying, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while” (Mk 6:31).
• Once we accept that invitation and journey with Christ into the state of the desert, Christ can begin to strengthen us. The details of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, including the temptations by the devil, could only be known if Jesus had divulged them, because no one else was there. He very much wanted the details known so that we would be able, in prayer, to live them with him. Jesus prayed and fasted for an incredible forty days, which obviously would have left him physically weak and famished. It was at this moment of physical weakness that the Devil came to him to tempt him. In the temptations Jesus suffered and later described to his disciples, the devil brought out in a pristine form the types of temptation that Christ would later undergo in his public ministry and that each of us undergoes in life. By focusing on how Christ responded, we, too, can learn how to respond as Jesus did.
• The first temptation was aimed right at Jesus’ tremendous hunger after 40 days of eating nothing: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of Bread.” Jesus had come to save people, to feed their most important hunger — the hunger of their souls — and Satan was trying to induce him, as Archbishop Sheen used to say, to become a baker rather than a Savior. To feed people’s physical hunger would be a great way to win a crowd and become popular. But Jesus himself was already living off a greater source of food and was preparing to train disciples to seek this same celestial nutrition: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” This same insight he passed on to the crowds when they were following him to have their stomachs satiated: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (Jn 6:27). Lent is a time in which we refocus on working for the food that endures, in which we grow in our trust for God’s providing, that he loves us more than the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, that he will give us each day our daily bread, so that the devil is not able to tempt us by our tummies.
• In the second temptation, the devil tried to tempt Jesus to test God the Father. “If you are the Son of God,” he chortled, “throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone’ (cf. Ps 91).” This is the temptation to be presumptuous with God, to do something reckless and make us expect God to rescue us from it every time, to re-create our relationship with God on our terms rather than God’s terms; then, when God doesn’t seem to respond to that situation because such behavior harms us, the devil uses it to divide us even further from God. Some, for example, can smoke a pack of cigarettes a day for several decades and then expect God to cure us of lung cancer when we ask him politely in prayer. Jesus passed onto his disciples his response to the devil’s temptation, so that we could make it our own: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Rather than presumptuously throwing ourselves down from precipices, Lent is a time in which we trustingly throw ourselves up into God’s outstretched merciful arms.
• In the third temptation, the devil presented Jesus with a vision of all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” Jesus was about to announce that his kingdom is at hand, but the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44) was proposing a short cut, another way, a supposedly easier way. The devil likewise tempts us to compromise our relationship with God in order to get ahead or to get what we want. He promises power, prestige, profit or privilege if only compromise our relationship with God and his moral law in order to serve the “ruler of this world.” Jesus rejected this temptation, firstly saying, “Get away, Satan! It is written, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Jesus told us about this third struggle so that we could learn from him how to know, love and serve God. God liberally extends to us the grace of conversion in Lent so that we might recognize our idols, and turn away from them to love the true God, serving him with all our mind, heart, soul and strength.
• How do we imitate and live Jesus’ responses to the devil and grow in strength against temptation? Jesus tells us in St. Mark’s Gospel, that some devils are expunged “only by prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). That is why, on Ash Wednesday, the Church, presents before us the need for us to pray, to fast and to give of ourselves and what we have toward others. The devil seeks to trick us to disorder our relationship ourselves, to others, and to God, and fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are the respective antidotes. The more we fast and place spiritual nourishment over material food, the less vulnerable we will be to be tempted by bread and other earthly pleasures. The more we sacrifice ourselves and our belongings for the good of others, the less prone we will be to giving in to the devil’s seductions to give us power or control over others. The more we pray to God and seek to know and do his will in our lives the less assailable we will be to the devil’s traps presumptuously to force God’s hand. These three traditional practices of Lent are a great remedy, a merciful medicine, to the Evil One’s poison. And that’s why we need to make bold resolutions in Lent with regard to all three. Lent is an annual spiritual desert boot camp the Church gives us so that we might train with Jesus and following his example to be victorious in this most important battle we’ll ever fight.
• And they all converge in the Mass, which is supposed to be for us an oasis in the midst of a desertified culture where we can be with Christ. It’s there that we go to pray together with him to the Father. It’s there that we arrive having fasted so that we might hunger for him and for what he hungers. It’s there that we receive the greatest alm of all, Christ himself, and are made capable of living a truly Eucharistic life, giving in memory of him Christ himself together with our own blood, blood, what we have and who we are. So let us head to the desert with Christ this Sunday as we receive the living water and blood flowing from his side, bringing us to life, and strengthening us to live off of every word that comes from his mouth, to obey rather than test him, and to serve and love him with all we’ve got!
• A blessed Lent!

The Gospel passage on which the homily was based was: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download