First Sunday of Lent
Father Phillip W. DeVous
Guest
At the outset of Lent, we are brought into the cosmic confrontation between Jesus Christ and the devil. This is a spiritual reality revealed to us: the state of spiritual combat we are always within, but which is brought to the fore during this penitential time. As St. John Chrysostom noted concerning Jeus’s battle with Satan: “Jesus’s victory sets an example for Christian obedience. Earthly life is a wilderness trial for God’s people en route to the land of heaven … God wills the faithful to overcome temptations from the world, the flesh and the devil. Triumph is possible through penance and obedience to God’s word. Rather than earthly bread and power, the faithful must desire the food of God’s will and the humility of Christ.”
In tempting Jesus with the things of the flesh, symbolized by the bread, we are shown the “night of senses.” If we resist the temptation to indulge our bodily appetites without reference to the order of creation and grace, there is no reason for the devil to keep tempting us in this way. Jesus shows us the necessity of ascetism and fasting in the face of the temptations emanating from the unruly cravings of the flesh. Our Blessed Lord shows us how fasting is a prayer of the body, as well as how it can fortify us against powerful temptations of this sort, bringing our flesh under subjection to grace and truth.
Moving from the lower to the higher in the order of temptation, the devil tempts Jesus to living according to the spectacle and approval of the world. If Jesus would only grandly manifest himself, then people would fear and follow him! He could become a showman instead of the savior. As we contemplate this temptation of Jesus, we consider how often we are tempted by the attractions and entertaining things of the passing world. We can begin to see how we seek consolation and affirmation, not in God and spiritual things, but in material things, always wanting more and better stuff and higher quality experiences. Consequently, we lose sight of what lasts because we are blinded by what does not.
Failing to tempt Jesus with the blinding lights of the world’s approval, the devil moves to tempt Jesus to reject his identity as the Son God. Satan encourages Jesus to embrace an earthly and political mission to rule over the kingdoms of the world. The evil one is trying to prompt Jesus to forgo his mission as the suffering servant of the Kingdom of God.
As we consider this temptation of Jesus, we see the heart of the temptation is to substitute truth for the simulacrum of truth, which we think can be realized in power. This is pride. Pride, wherein we assume and assert “our truth” is what must be thought and our will is what must be done. When we fall to this species of pride, our hearts become hardened to the Eternal Word of God. Then, the way of Christ, which is the way of the Cross, is deemed impossible, undesirable and unnecessary. We end up living a self-enclosed, self-referential, selfish way of life. The result: we become possessed by the world and miss the mark of communion with Christ and heaven.
The diabolic illusion is always one of Godless self-sufficiency, personal aggrandizement and self-justification. In essence, the devil’s proposition to humanity is this: I will give you everything you think you want, and I will make you feel you will “be like gods.” And in so doing, the devil will make you forget that you are dust and to dust you shall return.
In the face of these primordial temptations to relentless worldly satisfaction, to self-sufficiency and to that of personal aggrandizement, we take up with the Lord the spiritual combat of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. These disciplines of the soul and weapons of the spirit are given to us so that hardened hearts can be cracked open to the grace and the glory of God. These weapons of the spirit must be wielded so that we might learn anew to worship the Lord, our God, serving him alone with undivided hearts. The goal of this spiritual combat is to move us from vice to virtue, from sin to sanctity, from death to life, Himself — the one who is the “joy of our salvation.”
Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of St. Charles Parish, Flemingsburg and St. Rose of Lima Parish, Mayslick, Ky.
