FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT.

LENT I SUNDAY ; GEN 2: 7-9, 3: 1-7; ROM 5: 12-19;Gospel: MT 4: 1-11
William Willimon in his book “What’s Right With the Church” tells about leading a Sunday School class that was studying the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. After careful study and explanation of each of the three temptations, Dr. Willimon asked, "How are we tempted today?" A young salesman was the first to speak. "Temptation is when your boss calls you in, as mine did yesterday, and says, 'I'm going to give you a real opportunity. I'm going to give you a bigger sales territory. We believe that you are going places, young man.' ‘But I don't want a bigger sales territory,’ the young salesman told his boss. ‘I'm already away from home four nights a week. It wouldn't be fair to my wife and daughter.’ ‘Look,’ his boss replied, ‘we're asking you to do this for your wife and daughter. Don't you want to be a good father? It takes money to support a family these days. Sure, your little girl doesn't take much money now, but think of the future. Think of her future. I'm only asking you to do this for them, the boss said.” The young man told the class: “Now that’s temptation.”
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to find out what he was made of. The first temptation was “to turn stones into loaves of bread.” Lent is a time to look at such temptations, sin and the consequences. Lent was originally established for new Christians, those who experienced a call. They were to spend forty days and forty nights preparing for their baptism. If at the end they still wanted to follow Jesus, then on Easter Eve they would be baptized as the sun was rising in the east, signaling the new day, the new era, inaugurated because of the Resurrection.

But later the Church used the forty days as a time of renewal for those who were already Christians, because at a certain point everyone in the empire became a Christian, everyone was baptized as infants. So the time of Lent was used as a time of renewal and recommitment to the Christian life, examining our lives in light of the one we are supposed to follow.

Since the Church begins the season with a reflection on the origins of sin among us, the main themes in today’s readings are temptation, sin, guilt and forgiveness. We are told of the temptations offered to our Lord, submission to which would have destroyed his mission. Today’s readings give us the notion that testing comes to us by an agency apart from and in opposition to God. But the truth is that, while testing comes from the outside, temptation comes from within ourselves. However, the good news is that, though we are tempted and often succumb, God’s grace provides the way of salvation for us. Testing is to strengthen us in faith, while temptation is to weaken our faith. Testing comes from God and temptation comes from evil source.
Like Adam and Eve in the first reading today, we are all tempted to put ourselves in God's place. Consequently we resent every limit on our freedom, and we don't want to be held responsible for the consequences of our choices. Temptation is a very real part of life: temptation to stray from the values we hold dear, temptation to take short cuts, to avoid struggle, to find the easy way through.
God helps us in our temptations so that we may not fall away from our faith. Jesus told Peter that he prayed for him and others that he may not fall away. In the garden of Gathsemene Jesus told his disciples to pray with him so that they may not fall into temptation.
A teen-age boy told his parents he was going to run away from home. "Listen," he said, "I'm leaving home. There is nothing you can do to stop me. I want excitement, adventure, beautiful women, money, and fun. I'll never find it here, so I'm leaving. Just don't try to stop me!" As he headed for the door, his father leaped up and ran toward him. "Dad," the boy said firmly, "you heard what I said. Don't try to stop me. I'm going!" "Who's trying to stop you?" answered the father, "I'm going with you!" In our weak moments of temptation Jesus is going with us, because he knows we cannot fight it ourselves.
Every one of us is tempted to seek sinful pleasures, easy wealth and a position of authority, power and glory, and to use any means, even unjust or sinful ones to gain these things. Jesus serves as a model for us in conquering temptations by strengthening himself through prayer, penance and the active use of the ‘Word of God’. Temptations make us more powerful warriors of God by strengthening our minds and hearts. By constantly struggling against temptations we become stronger. Each time one is tempted to do evil but does good, one becomes stronger. Further, we are never tempted beyond our power. In his first letter, St. John assures us: “Greater is the one who is in us, than the one who is in the world (1 John 4: 4). We may be strengthened by St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 10:13: "No testing has overtaken you, that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and [God] will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing [God] will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
We are all affected by the culture around us, just like fish are affected by the water quality of the lake where they live. And the culture around us has become drunk with science and technology - so much so that it has completely forgotten this basic truth, that man cannot live on bread alone.
With our genius for science and technology we seem to be on the road to being able to turn stones into bread . The popular culture is trying to make religion into a totally private thing - like a hobby. If society can perfect itself through scientific progress, why do we need God? We need God because society can NOT perfect itself - we do not live on bread alone. We need God because every new invention can either be used for good purposes or bad purposes, and without God's grace we will neither be able to identify the good ones, nor will we be strong enough to choose them. We need God because he is the source of truth, and our souls yearn for truth as much as our bodies yearn for bread.

Hence, during this Lent, let us confront our evil tendencies by prayer , by penance and by meditative reading of the Bible. Let’s use this season of Lent to rediscover who we are before God and say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did.