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Gospel
Lk 4:1-13
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,
to be tempted by the devil.
He ate nothing during those days,
and when they were over he was hungry.
The devil said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered him,
“It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”
Then he took him up and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.
The devil said to him,
“I shall give to you all this power and glory;
for it has been handed over to me,
and I may give it to whomever I wish.
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It is written
You shall worship the Lord, your God,
and him alone shall you serve.”
Then he led him to Jerusalem,
made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
throw yourself down from here, for it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,
and:
With their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus said to him in reply,
“It also says,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.A lot of people think temptation is a sin, or at least is wrong. But temptations are opportunities for us to look at ourselves and see where we are going on our journey of life. If we think of God as some super being out there somewhere it is easy for us to think that this god is testing us to se if we will pas and are doing all the right things. But this is not the case. God is not “out there” but is in and with us. Some of us need to believe God is testing us because we need to feel that we are doing all the right things and have to earn God’s love. In other words, we believe that if we are not doing the right things, believing the right dogmas, etc, God is not loving us. This causes many people a lot of pain. We don’t see any of this in Jesus. What Jesus shows us is God loving everybody without any limitation whatever. This also bothers folks who need to feel a sort of control over God — an “if I do the right things God has to love me and get me to heaven after I die” sort of thing. Having all the answers all the time offer a sense of power for us, and in our own mind qualifies us to judge others.
The basic message/journey of the Gospel is our transformation, through our openness to the Spirit who, as Jesus said,”will remind you of everything I have told you”. The Spirit helps us understand what it means for us in our particular circumstances to live as a disciple of Christ. Temptations give us the chance for us to look at ourselves at any particular place on our journey and see how open or closed to the Spirit we really are.
Lent is a tradition; to look at this in our daily living.God does not need our prayer and penance, and we do not do them to keep God happy. We do them to help ourselves be open to the grace of God happening in us, and, consequently, in others.
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