Following Christ the New Adam in Responding to the Devil’s Temptations, First Sunday of Lent (A), February 26, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
First Sunday of Lent, Year A
February 26, 2023
Gen 2:7-9.3:1-7, Ps 51, Rom 5:12-19, Mt 4:1-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following text guided the homily: 

• Lent is an annual spiritual boot camp in which the Holy Spirit impels us to follow Jesus into the desert, to pray and fast with him for 40 days, and to prepare to give ourselves together with him as alms to others. The First Sunday of Advent is the annual opportunity for us to recognize that this boot camp does not take place in a vacuum or is directed toward self-improvement. The Church has us focus on the reality of the devil and the way that the evil one seeks to tempt us away from God, to seduce us to choose against him, so that we may separate ourselves from God in this life and self-alienate us from God forever. But in response to this subtle spiritual terrorism, the Church also has us focus on the remedies Christ the Divine Physician, the conquerer of the devil, sin and death, teaches us in the desert after his 40 days of fasting and prayer, so that we learn how to be successful in this mortal combat.
• Throughout human life, we have to face the wiles of the devil, just like Jesus had to face Satan anew in the Garden of Gethsemane. But youth is a particularly intense time of spiritual combat, because the devil wants to come after us before we have had the chance to recognize easily to discern his ordinary maneuvers, before we’ve developed the virtuous habits to strengthen us again his assaults. So he can come after us with intense temptations against faith in, hope toward and love for God. He can bombard us with temptations toward pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger and sloth. He can assail us with temptations to hate, harm or neglect our neighbor and to even to hate, harm or neglect ourselves. That’s why it’s super important on this First Sunday of Lent for all of us, but especially college students, to enter into Jesus’ desert academy, where we can learn from him how to diagnose, remedy and respond to the devil’s lies, empty promises and evil works. Jesus shows us today not only that the devil can be defeated but how he is to be defeated. To learn how to follow Christ in overcoming these temptations, though, we first need to understand better how the devil operates, and that brings us to focus very carefully on the first reading, where we encounter the blow-by-blow details of what we call the “original sin,” but in it we see the essential stages the devil uses to allure us to any sin.
• The first step is to try to get us to listen to God poorly, rather than attentively and lovingly. God had told Adam that he wasn’t to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but as he passed that on to Eve, the details changed, as Eve said, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat itor even touch it, lest you die.’” Even though Adam’s and Eve’s life depended on it, they hadn’t listened to God accurately. God had said nothing about not touching it. Every sin begins with a sin of listening. Pope Benedict said that every sin is ”essentially disobedience and refusal to hear” God (VD 26).
• The second step is to get us to distrust God. The devil told Eve that they wouldn’t die if they did the exact opposite of what God had commanded. He declared that God gave the command simply because he was jealous of his own divine status and didn’t want anyone else to become like him, even though his will from the beginning was to create us in his image and likeness and help us to live according to it. The act of faith involves first trusting God and then trusting in what he says. The devil took the opposite path: he worked back from getting them to distrust what was said to getting them to distrust the One who said it. The devil continues to try to tempt us in that way. He says to us, “You won’t die if you voluntarily miss a Sunday Mass. … You won’t die if you follow your heart and pretend you’re married to someone whom you love but to whom God has not joined you in one flesh. … You won’t die if you fail to forgive a family member who’s wronged you. … You won’t die if you stiff someone in need because he’s probably a con man anyway. … You won’t die if you take someone’s life, whether at the beginning, or at the end, or your own age. … You won’t die if, in fact, if you break any of the commandments, because by them God is just trying to stifle and control you.” The devil seeks to reel us in by that diabolical two-step of faulty hearing and distrust — just as much as he hurt Adam and Eve.
• The third step is concupiscence, getting us to desire smaller goods instead of more important goods or even the greatest good of all. The devil knows that he can’t tempt us by evil, because evil is unattractive. He must use some aspect of the good and get us to desire it over the true good. Today we see that “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” She began to desire those goods, real or imaginary, above the good of obedience, above the good of trust, above the good of even her life. The devil will seek to do similar things with us, getting us to seek lesser goods or even great goods by immoral means.
• The fourth step is the physical committing of the sin to which the heart had already consented: “She took some of its fruit and ate it.” She had already taken the first bite through desire.
• The fifth step is to try to create a communion of sin. If we don’t feel good about where we are, we want others to join us. While there are some solitary sins that we try to keep secret from everyone, for most sins we want company. We want to say to ourselves, “everybody’s doing it,” so that we can conclude that our choices can’t be that bad. We see it here when Eve “also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
• The sixth and last step is that there’s shame — coming from the fact that they know “knew … evil.” Whereas previously Genesis tells us “they were naked without shame,” now it says they “realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” Prior, they trusted; after sin, they recognized their vulnerabilities before each other and protected their most vulnerable parts from each other. They would also try to hide themselves out of fear from him, as if he, too, who created them and gave them everything would harm them. There was, in short, a three-fold rupture: in their relationship with God, with each other, and within each of them, body and soul. Whenever we sin, the devil wants to lead us to try to hide ourselves from God and his mercy, to withdraw from him, lest we recognize what we’ve done, confess it and receive his forgiveness. He tries to cajole us into thinking that God who sees everything can’t already see what we’ve done.
• That’s the six-step process of the devil, an itinerary we have taken often whenever we’ve sinned. But we can also learn from it the path to respond. We must, in contrast: Listen to what God is saying to us in Sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the events of life, in the words of the magisterium, in the lives and writings of the saints, and in other ways, and make sure we’re understanding it appropriately, loving it, and seeking to act on it; grow in loving trust of God, especially in the challenging times of our life; desire the right things, in proper order, and respond to God’s help to acquire self-mastery so that we’re not dominated by concupiscence; be doers of the Word, acting according to what God has asked; bring others into a communion of good, to enter more fully into the loving communion of persons that Jesus came into the world to form, prayed for during the Last Supper, and wants us to share forever; and experience not shame but the joy that comes from uniting ourselves to the Lord in loving action and gratitude.
• Jesus charts this path for us in the Gospel today in his own battles with the devil. Sometimes we can think that because of Jesus’ divinity, he couldn’t have been tempted by the devil. But because of his sacred humanity, as the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but … one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). He has suffered the same temptations we do, but he never consented to them. That’s why he’s such a reason for hope to us in our trials, because he can truthfully tell us, “I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there. Trust in me. I can help you overcome those temptations and pass those tests without sin.” Think about the temptations you have suffered even in the past week. Jesus confronted them. The trials he suffered were not just the three named in today’s Gospel. St. Luke tells us that the devil subjected Jesus to “every temptation” (Lk 4:13), all those that human beings are able to suffer. And hence the path he teaches us to overcome them works not just for the temptations in the Gospel, but for all of them.
• When we look at the temptations Jesus suffered in the Gospel, we see that they indeed summarize every form of temptation to which a person can be subjected. The first temptation was to disorder one’s relationship with himself and the rest of the created world. The second was to warp our relationship with God. The third was to distort our relationship with others.
• The first temptation came after Jesus was literally starving, having fasted for 40 days. The devil tempted him to become a baker rather than a savior, to use his talents and powers to turn stone into bread. “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 or to use the talents God has given us in a selfish way, for our own advantage, rather than God and the good of others.
• In the second temptation, the devil tried to tempt Jesus to test God the Father. He brought him to the parapet of the temple and chortled, “If you are the Son of God, 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. Students can blow off studying all semester and on their way to their exam pray that God will help them get a good grade, and if or when they fail, the devil can often get them to doubt God’s existence or goodness. Jesus passed onto his disciples his response to this form of diabolical temptation, so that we could make it our own. Citing Sacred Scripture, he said, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” The way not to tempt the Lord is by doing what we should be doing when we should be doing it. 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 brought Jesus up to a very high mountain and presented to him a vision of all the kingdoms of the world. “All these I shall give to you,” he promised, “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 sacrifice 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. Satan tries to tempt us to disorder our relationship with others, to seek dominion over them, regardless of the means. In the course of history, many people have made these Faustian bargains, selling out on their worship of God for the sake of getting ahead. We can think readily in our own time of politicians who have sold their souls to the diabolical pro-abortion plank of their political party so that they might get elected. Others have betrayed friends or traded their chastity for the sake of a promotion. This is the temptation to forsake God’s will for the sake of earthly advantage, to seek to build up our own earthly kingdom rather than enter God’s. Jesus shows us the remedy. If we are truly worshipping and loving God, we will be loving others, who are made in his image. If we are serving God, we will not use others for the sake of getting ahead, but will strive to serve them in love.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 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. 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. 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.
• Jesus suffered every type of temptation we face but never sinned, and today, on this first Sunday of Lent, he tells each of us, “Follow me!” He calls us to trust in him, to believe in his word, and to put it into practice even and especially when we find it challenging. He has been helping us share in his victory over the devil and his lies since from our earliest days as a Christian. On the day of our baptism, we received his own power to defeat the temptations of the evil one. Our parents and godparents said for us then words we have repeated many times, that we reject Satan, all his evil works and all his empty promises and profess our faith in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all the means he gives us through the prayer and the Sacraments. In our name, they prayed on the day of our baptism words we have reiterated tens of thousands of times, “Let us not to fall into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One!” Today we renew those promises and that prayer!
• In one of the many great Lenten hymns we pray throughout this season, “Lord, who throughout these 40 days,” we sing words that summarize the chief message of this first Sunday of Lent and this whole Lenten season: We say, Lord, “as you with Satan did contend and did the victory win; so give us strength in you to fight, in you to conquer sin!” That’s what Christ wants to do. He wants us to strengthen us from the inside to fight, to win, and to conquer sin. To help us do just that, he is about to give us this world’s supreme gift. He was unwilling to change a stone into bread for the devil, but for us, today, he changes bread into his Body. He is “the word that comes from the mouth of God” and now God the Father wants to put that word into our mouths! Together with him, everything is possible. Together with him, we can withstand any and every temptation and share his eternal victory. Together with him, we can indeed live by the word of God and worship and serve God alone.

he readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel
MT 4:1-11

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert
to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights,
and afterwards he was hungry.
The tempter approached and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
He said in reply,
“It is written:
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”

Then the devil took him to the holy city,
and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him,
“Again it is written,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
At this, Jesus said to him,
“Get away, Satan!
It is written:
The Lord, your God, shall you worship
and him alone shall you serve.”
Then the devil left him and, behold,
angels came and ministered to him.

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