Inwards to Outwards, Downwards to Upwards

First Sunday of Lent Year C

People have often noted that our society has become increasingly Godless or more atheistic. Is this true? There are countless of studies done in the West that seems to support this proposition. When surveyed, the majority of individuals state that they don’t identify with any religion. As Chesterton said, “He who does not believe in God will believe in anything.” Just recently, Lady Gaga when receiving her Grammy award, proudly declared: “music is love,” perhaps a deliberate spin on St John’s declaration that “God is love.”

We may be tempted (forgive the obvious pun) to focus merely on the temptations of Christ on this First Sunday of Lent, but the readings actually take us along another path of reflexion - what do we really believe in - the faith which we profess. You will notice that during the season of Lent and Easter, it is strongly recommended that the longer Nicene Creed is substituted with the shorter Apostles’ Creed. The reason for this substitution is not due to the brevity of the latter since our liturgies of Lent are typically lengthened by the Rites associated with the RCIA. The real reason is that the Apostles’ Creed is the creed used at baptism and the focus of both Lent and Easter is the Sacrament of Initiation, which begins with Baptism.

That is the reason why we have two ancient examples of professions of faith in today’s readings, the first predating Christianity, while the second is one of the earliest Christian creeds.

In the first reading, we have the ancient profession of faith which focuses on what God has done for the Israelites during the Exodus. Moses instructs the people that this creed is to be said by the priests when making an offering on behalf of the people, reminding them of the reason why the sacrifice is made. They should never forget that God is the very reason for their existence, their survival, and their freedom.

In the second reading, St Paul explains that the Christian profession of faith should focus on our belief in Jesus as Lord and what God has done by raising Him from the dead: “If your lips confess that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. By believing from the heart you are made righteous; by confessing with your lips you are saved.”

Finally, in the gospel we come to realise that creeds are not just meant to be propositional (mere statements of belief) but are meant to be practical (to be lived out). Here we have the three temptations posed by Satan to the Lord. St Luke’s ordering of the temptations is slightly different from Matthew’s version (the second temptation is switched with the third). On the face of it, these three temptations appear to have nothing to do with our profession of faith but are in fact an inversion, a parody of our fundamental faith. Satan, the adversary of God and man, is attempting to lure our Lord into making a mockery of faith by professing a faith which places trust in His own resources and even in the devil, as opposed to placing our trust and faith in God. Before we affirm our faith in God, we must renounce our dependence on Satan.

This is the reason why during the rite of Baptism and the renewal of baptismal promises made at Easter and before one receives the Sacrament of Confirmation, the renunciation of sin is a necessary prelude to the profession of faith and both precedes the administering of the sacrament of baptism and confirmation. Because of the renunciation of sin and profession of faith, which forms one rite, the elect would not be baptised merely passively but will receive this great sacrament with the active resolve to renounce error and hold fast to God.

As I had mentioned earlier, St Luke’s ordering of the temptations differ from that of St Matthew’s. Unlike St Matthew, Luke concludes the list of temptations with the temptation that takes place within the Temple precinct and not on a mountaintop. Here, we witness the audacity of the devil to challenge God’s sovereignty, the ultimate basis of all temptations. These temptations are not merely luring Christ or each of us to place our trust in the cravings of the flesh or the material things of the world. Sin ultimately turns us away from God. The devil is actually selling us this lie - trust in your own desires, trust in your own power, trust in your own strength - because trusting in God is wholly insufficient! It is never enough!

The gospels in setting out these three temptations are trying to juxtapose to the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness with our Lord Jesus’ own experience. The three temptations of Jesus recall the three failures of the Israelites in the desert. Where the devil tempts the Lord to turn stones into bread, we see how the Israelites complained about the lack of food in the desert. Where the devil places our Lord on a mountain and promises Him lordship over the world if only He would bow and worship him, the Israelites questioned the lordship of God and instead worshipped an idol, a bronze calf. Where the devil tempts our Lord to test God, the devil had succeeded in getting the Israelites to test God while they were in the desert.

Satan was tempting Jesus to recapitulate the Israelites' lack of trust in God. Jesus would have nothing of it. In one of the most beautiful lines in Sacred Scripture, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet never sinned" (Heb 4:15). The story ends with our Lord’s victory. Temptation does not necessarily lead to sin. If we hold fast to the Lord, and rely on His grace and strength, we will be victorious. Lent is the season when we are called to recapitulate our Lord’s victory over sin rather than the Israelites’ failure. The Church aids us in the battle by recommending the three practices of Lent – fasting, almsgiving and prayer. The practices of Lent are the remedy to the temptations of the Evil One.

At the end of this Lenten season, we will celebrate and profess the mystery of faith - the death and the resurrection of the Lord. At Easter, the priest will invite you to renew your baptismal promises with these words: “Dear brethren, through the Paschal Mystery we have been buried with Christ in Baptism, that we may walk with him in newness of life. And so, let us renew the promises of Holy Baptism, which we once renounced Satan and his works and promised to serve God in the holy Catholic Church.” We turn away from being ‘inwards and downwards’ to being ‘outwards and upwards.’ Having rejected Satan and all his works and empty promises, let us with firm conviction profess our faith publicly in God the Father and His works, in God the Son, Jesus Christ, and His works, and in God the Holy Spirit and His works. Those works, which the Lord has begun in us, will continue in us throughout this season of Lent and beyond until the Lord completes it when we go forth to meet Him as He returns in glory.

A Season of Redemption and Release

Ash Wednesday 2025

Everything about today’s liturgy screams of “penance,” from the ashes which you would be imposing on each other, to the readings which speak of the penitential practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. The entire liturgy is so penitential that the Church omits the penitential rite at the beginning of today’s Mass. I guess to a non-Catholic observer, our Catholic “obsession” with penance seems morbidly strange. Why would anyone relish the thought of denying yourself something pleasurable and make a celebration of it?

Penance comes from a Latin word, ‘paenitentia’ which derives from a Latin noun, meaning repentance, and ultimately derives from the Greek noun ποινή (poine). The original Greek word seems more austere than the Latin and English. It’s practically “blood money” – the price you pay as compensation for taking the life of another. For the uninitiated, mortification and penances in the Catholic context do not involve any form of blood-letting. Thank God for that. You do not have to cut your wrist or mutilate yourself or even pay an exorbitant price as compensation for the harm that you have done to another. But someone had to pay the price and someone did. Someone was mutilated for our crime. Someone had to exchange His life for ours, He took the punishment which was our due, He died so that we might live. You know who it is – it’s Jesus Christ.

Because of what the Lord has done for us on the cross, penances are no longer ways of earning God’s forgiveness; nor, for that matter, is going to Confession. Christ has already won that forgiveness for us by means of His sacrifice on the cross. And that forgiveness is made present for us by the work of His Holy Spirit. But if God has already forgiven us, and if Confession makes that forgiveness present to us in concrete, visible, audible ways, what’s the penance for?

Because of what the Lord did for us, the word “penance” now takes on a broader meaning – it now involves “recompense, reward, redemption, or release.” Let us first look at our own experience of human relationships and the dynamics of forgiveness offered to someone who has hurt us. Even if someone forgives you, this by itself doesn’t mean you are yet, in yourself, changed. “Forgiving” is something the other person does; what do I do? Have we internalised that forgiveness? Has it changed us?

Forgiveness opens the door to a changed relationship and a new life. But it would be a mistake for me to think that the forgiveness is the final step in the process when forgiveness is the first step. The next step is for that love to change my heart and set me on a new course in life. Doing penance is about making those first few steps in a new direction. God’s transforming love doesn’t leave me in my sin; its goal is to transform me. The grace of the sacrament works by changing my heart. And if my heart is truly changed, then I need to begin to live differently as well. So, by doing penances, we shouldn’t mistakenly imagine that I’m “earning” God’s love and forgiveness. No, we love, “because God has loved us first.” (1 Jn 4) It is only by accepting God’s love and forgiveness that I can be changed. Penance completes the process of reconciliation.

Another dangerous view of penances is to imagine that penance is an outmoded concept, that we are not expected to make any effort to put things right, since our Lord Jesus has already done it all for us. This suffers from the sin of presumption - presuming that heaven is guaranteed and hell is only a boogie man, a myth, to scare poor Catholics into submission. But both these views of penance are both inaccurate and dangerous. They reduce penances to performative acts – either playing to the crowd or to God.

Today’s readings recover the correct view of penances. Penances are the means by which we right our relations both individually and collectively with God, our neighbour and ourselves. It is seen as the antidote or cure to the three-fold wreck of sin. This three-fold movement is a theme that is revisited again and again in the scripture. We see a disintegration of man’s personal integrity, his relationship with others and with God, at the Fall. This same movement appears again in our Lord’s three-fold temptation – to worship Satan instead of God, to seek approval instead of basing one’s relationship on truth, to prefer material comfort to one’s spiritual good.

In our Lord’s public ministry, the temptations come again and again – He hungers and thirsts, though He is able to make food out of nothing; the people wish to make Him King, and He evades them; the demons proclaim Him as the Holy One of God, and He silences them. This three-fold patterning continues in the Passion: in the agony in the Garden, in the trial before His accusers, in the three-fold denial of Saint Peter, in falling three times according to tradition, and from the cross He rejects the sedation of the wine (material comfort), the physical comfort of passers-by and finally, even experiences the desolation of being forsaken by God.

What does this mean for us? It means that the temptations that assail us on a daily basis are also the means by which God uses to strengthen us. Therefore, the penitential practices which we undertake are not to appease a God who has distanced Himself from our trials and sufferings. We can never accuse God of this because of what our Lord Jesus had to endure. Rather, our penitential practices are meant to unite us with our Lord who redeemed our pains and sufferings through His own. Fasting, almsgiving and prayer are the three means by which we conform ourselves to this three-fold patterning – By fasting we reject bodily comfort, by almsgiving we turn away from temporal power and the need to please the crowds, and by prayer we acknowledge the primacy of God. But in order to do this we should first earnestly seek the assistance of the Sacrament of Penance, confession, lest our spiritual exercise be subverted by pride. Penitential acts, when done without true humility and repentance, will ultimately become performative. And when our acts become performative, God is not honoured, only man.

The goal of Christian penitence is not to pay the ransom, our Lord has already done that. The purpose of our penitence is to participate in the joy of the redeemed, as returning prodigal sons and daughters to receive the cloak and ring and banquet from the One by Whose stripes we have been healed. Through our penances, done with humility and love, we regain what we have lost, we receive healing for what is wounded, we restore what has been damaged by sin. As we begin this Holy Season of Penance, let us be assured of the abundant graces of mercy which our Lord has poured out and continues to pour on us from the cross.

From Destruction comes New Life

First Sunday of Lent Year B

Such stark contrast! Our lectionary juxtaposes two extreme conditions, a deluge or great flood in the first reading, and an arid barren desert in the gospel. Too much water on the one hand, and too little to none on the other. Both conditions seem inhospitable and even humanly uninhabitable. What’s the connexion apart from being two extreme polarities? These two scenes draw us back to the beginning - to how it all began - to the story of creation. Most folks are familiar with the story of how God created the universe in six days and then rested on the seventh. But there are actually two and not one account of creation. Chapter One of the Book Genesis begins in a watery chaos and Chapter Two begins in a desert.

And so, we have in the first reading an account of God renewing His covenant with Noah in the aftermath of the flood. The flood itself portrays a return of the earth to the primeval state of Genesis where darkness, water, and wind covered the earth. The great flood is a testament to God’s hatred of sin and His determination to wipe it from the face of the earth. God blows a “wind” over “the deep” and “the waters” recede. When at last the flood subsides, the ground is dry and new vegetation is springing up. The barriers set in place by God at creation are restored - the dry land is once again separated from the waters. The occupants of the ark, both humans and animals, step on dry land and life begins anew. If the precreation scene in Genesis Chapter One begins in pitch darkness, this beautiful scene in the first reading is bathed in light - no stormy clouds in the sky but a bright sunny day with a rainbow crowning God’s redeemed creation. It is a picture of perfection, but not yet. That would have to wait until the Son of God becomes the Son of Man and seals a new covenant with humanity with His own blood instead of the sacrifice of animals as was done by Noah and the ancestors of old.

Let us not forget that the first flood swept away the evil from the surface of the earth, but not from the hearts of the ark’s passengers. So an even greater act of salvation was needed, one that was more radical, that penetrated to the very “root” of evil. God Himself enters into our world in the form of a man and engages in hand-to-hand combat with the father of lies. For sin to be rooted out, repentance is necessary. And so the rallying cry of God’s ultimate champion is “Repent, and believe the Good News.”

If the first reading calls us back to Chapter One of Genesis, the gospel story alludes to and reverses what takes place in Chapter Two and Three: the planting of the Garden in the midst of a barren desert, the creation of man, the first Son of God, and His subsequent temptation and fall. Here in the gospel, there is no garden - Paradise has been lost and all creation has been rendered a barren wasteland by man’s sin. But instead of succumbing to the ancient serpent, our Lord Jesus triumphs over Satan. Instead of enmity between man and the animal kingdom, we already see the beginnings of a reconciliation as wild beasts gather around the Lord. If one man wrought humanity’s downfall, another man, the perfect man, the one whom St Mark at the very beginning of the gospel identifies by His rightful title, the Son of God, will lead humanity in its ascent to the heavens.

The wrestling match is won by the Son. This, however, is not the decisive battle. By means of the cross, the sign of this New Covenant, our Lord Jesus decisively vanquished sin and its patron, letting loose from His pierced side a stream that was more powerful than the ancient waters traversed by Noah and Moses. The fathers of the Church saw in those two streams of blood and water, the birth of the Church through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. In Christ’s death and resurrection, creation is healed and reborn. The key for us to now participate in this recreation is repentance. Repentance begins the path to redemption and to sanctification. Repentance leads to conversion and conversion leads to baptism.

Through repentance, faith and immersion in these mighty waters of baptism, not the waters at creation or at the great flood but the waters that flowed from our Lord’s death on the cross, sin can finally be scoured not just from the skin but from the heart. In the second reading, St Peter explains that the water of the flood - “is a type of the baptism which saves you now, and which is not the washing off of physical dirt but a pledge made to God from a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” Baptism means burying the old man with Christ and emerging from the womb of the Church as a new creation, sharing in Christ’s resurrection. Lent is therefore the intensive preparation for those seeking baptism at Easter and an opportunity for the rest of us who are already baptised to recall our baptismal identity by renewing the promises made at our baptism.

This is what Lent is all about. It is a time when we remember the death that brings new Life. Just like Noah, his family and the animals at the moment they stepped out of the ark, would have been surprised by what they saw, this Lent too holds many surprises for us. We can either look at the destruction wrought by our sin, mourn the loss of all the things that have been taken from us or we had to give up, or we could behold a new world, a new creation before us. What was once a barren desert, watered by God’s graces, would now be teeming with life. For the great paradox at the heart of Christianity, a mystery we celebrate every Lent and Easter, is that a Death was the remedy for death. It was in losing His life that Christ brought new Life to the world. In the words of the Byzantine liturgy, “He trampled down death by death.” In the greatest paradox of all, our Lord changed death into a means of life, an ending into a new beginning. What was once our doom is now our salvation. “The time has come and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News!”

Not everything which looks good is good

First Sunday of Lent Year A

The first reading and the gospel provides us with two paradigms of dealing with temptation - we can either surrender or resist at all cost. In the first reading, Eve surrendered to the serpent’s temptation of rationalising disobedience to God’s will. But in case one is tempted to blame her for man’s fall, we need to commend her for at least putting up a fight in initially resisting the serpent’s temptation by quoting God’s commandments. We can’t say the same for Adam. He gave in to his wife’s offer without any argument. No resistance, no fight, no struggle.

The serpent’s temptation is insidiously cunning. It provides an end that seems most desirable - becoming “like gods” who would autonomously know what is right and wrong. This ambition to be god-like has been man’s perennial temptation - hoping to achieve it through knowledge, through technological advancement, through medical discoveries which seek to prolong one’s life and perhaps one day, guarantee immortality. The irony in the story of the Fall, is that in desiring to be immortal gods, both Adam and Eve surrendered their natural gift of immortality (symbolised by the tree of life and its fruits which were available to them) and exchanged it for mortality - death, which was not part of God’s original plan for them, but because they chose to disobey God’s warning, death became their lot and that of their descendants.

In today’s gospel, the devil tempts Jesus three times. He tempts Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God by turning stones into bread. He tempts Jesus to test God and see if God will really save Him, and he deceitfully promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth if He will worship him. Unlike the first human beings, Jesus does not succumb to the devil’s temptations. Unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus chooses to resist the devil, reject his lies and took a stand for God. Rather than challenge and disobey God, He obeys God and trusts in God’s power to save Him. Jesus is the New Human Being, the pattern for what we must become.

Let’s look at the nature of both sets of temptations, the one we find in the first reading and the second set in the gospel. Although, both the tempted, Adam-Eve and Jesus, responded differently, there seems to be a discernible pattern that threads through the temptations offered by both the primordial serpent and Satan. Both sets of temptations were in principle good suggestions in themselves. Can it be bad to want to be holy like gods, feed the hungry, or have the power to make significant changes in the world or even convert your enemies and make them your friends or fans? And the answer would be ‘no.’ What Satan is suggesting here is apparently good and the result would be guaranteed success for humanity’s future and our Lord’s mission, with much ease and little cost and pain on His or our part. It is “salvation” or what passes as “salvation” without sacrifice, without the cross. Wouldn’t that be great? The devil’s logic is simple, “It doesn’t matter how you get what you want as long as you get it.” But then again, the end doesn’t justify the means!

And this is how “evil” often looks like – it does not wear the face of a monster, but a benign one. It’s not like you have to wake up one morning, and decide to plot some monstrous plan to commit evil. You don’t. Evil often takes the path of a slippery slope, each decision, often innocent looking, taken one after another, until you’re swimming eyeball deep in the moral mud. As St Ignatius used to remind his retreatants, the devil tempts bad people with bad things but good people with seemingly good things. He doesn’t waste subtlety on the wicked but for the good, he will always try to sugar coat the bad by making it look good. The subtlety of the devil is to make us believe that we don’t really need God if we can find a solution of our own. Ultimately, in wanting to do it “our way,” it overlooks “God’s way.”

Returning to the story of the temptations of Christ, what is apparently missing from the “good” suggestions of Satan is God and His plans for us. We just need to take a quick look at each of the temptations to expose the cunning casuistry of the tempter.

In the first temptation, the devil tells our Lord, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.” Of course, the Church recognises that there is a fundamental option for the poor and should work towards the alleviation and even where possible, the eradication of destitution. This is where we see the devil ingeniously subverting this good and then reducing the entire gospel to a socio-economic solution. Resolving social problems becomes the primary yardstick of redemption. Make sure the world has bread, other things, including God, comes later. But then the Lord reminds us, “man does not live on bread alone.” Rather, it is Christ, who is the Life-giving Bread from Heaven, who is the real answer to our hunger.

In the second temptation, the devil transports the Lord to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and challenges Him to perform a spectacular miracle. Imagine the instant influence and adulation Jesus could have acquired, if the crowds had witnessed Jesus literally being carried down by the angels or levitating in mid-air. But our Lord wisely responds that we “must not put the Lord your God to the test.” Authentic faith does not grow in the midst of a “circus” performance but often in low-key seemingly ordinary situations, in the silence of the heart.

In the third and final temptation, the devil shows the Lord the kingdoms of the world and promises power over them if only Jesus should worship him. The tempter is not so crude as to suggest directly that we should worship him. He merely suggests that we opt for the reasonable decision, that we choose to give priority to our machinations and thoroughly organised world, where God is exiled to the private sphere. Faith and religion are now directed toward political goals. The Lord challenges this falsehood by reiterating the fundamental commandment, “You must worship the Lord your God, and serve Him alone.”

This is what we face in many temptations: We want victory with limited commitment. We want heaven without sacrifice. We want a crown without the cross. As we begin this penitential season of grace, let us not just merely rely on our meagre strength and resources. In our eagerness to perform Lenten practices of self-denial, let us not forget that the end of all these acts is to expand the space in our hearts for God. They are not performed as if they are goals or achievements in themselves. Conversion is impossible without the grace of God. As we contend with our usual list of habitual sins, we often fail to recognise that one of our greatest temptations is to begin to rely on ourselves rather than on the power of God. To be a Christian is to be dependent upon God for everything, in battling temptations and growing in virtue. So does the end justify the means? Not if that end does not end in God and the means lead us nowhere closer to Him, for as St Thomas Aquinas reminds us, “the ultimate end of each thing (including man) is God.”

Serve God Alone

First Sunday of Lent Year C

“When Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything.” This maxim may be the single most quoted line from G.K. Chesterton’s prolific pen, that is, if he had actually written it. No one seems to be able to trace the original source of this quotation, but everyone seems to have no issues about its popular attribution to the great Catholic apologist and writer.

Today’s Gospel begs the question: if the Lord Himself could be subjected to temptations by the devil, what is the worst temptation that can challenge a faithful Christian? Is it lust or some other form of sexual temptation; money or power; insincerity or betrayal or self-righteousness? The answer may not be that obvious from a mere cursory reading of the gospel, but we need only to look back to the first temptation that was wrought by the devil in that pristine paradise known as Eden. Despite God having given Adam and Eve dominion over the whole of creation, a unique authority accorded only to man among all God’s creations, they were still susceptible to the lie of the devil, who tempted them with the authority of becoming “gods.” In other words, they attempted to usurp God’s power as their own. They wanted to be “like gods.”

The Great Temptation—the sin of Adam —is to rewrite the rules, tell God when He may and may not tell us what to do, and to live as our own god. As Pope Emeritus Benedict keenly notes in the first volume of his bestseller, Jesus of Nazareth, “At the heart of all temptations, as we see here, is the act of pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives.”

This is the common thread running through all three temptations and all other temptations we face. It is basically this: to treat God as less than God. We are constantly being tested in our trust that God sustains us, protects us and, in fact, delivers us. We would rather trust in our own strength, devices and resources than to trust in God and His Providence. And ultimately, “when Man ceases to worship God he does not worship nothing but worships everything;” material possessions, power, men’s approval and affections.

The three temptations narrated in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (though in a slightly different sequence) are three manifestations of the same mother of all temptations – to be ‘like gods’. As opposed to doing the will of the Father, Satan tempts Jesus to follow his own path and way. The devil tries to make Jesus believe the fallacy that the end justifies the means. The first temptation seems harmless enough - to make bread. It was the temptation of too much self-reliance, the temptation that posits our belief that we are capable of manufacturing our own salvation through some socio-economic or political solution. The second temptation is the temptation of naked power, it is taking the short cut to salvation, minus the inconvenience of the cross, and thus cancelling the need for genuine conversion. And finally, the third temptation is the temptation for the spectacular and the sensational, seeking a sign, expecting God to do something special, telling Him to do it my way.

But here is how our Lord responded to the three temptations of the devil: to the temptation to satisfy our wants, He says focus on God and not the world. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and mind and soul. To the temptation of power, our Lord Jesus reminds us that God alone is the source of all abundance and power in our lives. We derive power not from autonomy but from faithful and humble obedience to God. And finally, to the temptation of seeking the approval of others, the Lord reminds us that it is far more important to please God, than it is to please and impress men. Ultimately, the ultimate defence and cure to all forms of temptations is this, putting God first above all else.

Today, this proposal to be like gods, to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, is still the mother of temptations. It is still the basic temptation in the world today, the temptation to reject God’s norms of right and wrong, norms implanted in human nature and in creation, the temptation to reject divine authority, either direct, or mediated through the magisterial church, and become like gods ourselves. Dissent is never an excuse that one has to think creatively. It is the product of hubris, the arrogance of man who thinks that he is smarter than God and the Church, which Christ had established to provide us with clear guidance and direction. Thus, to submit to the will of God, to be obedient to His voice and to listen to the tender counsel of Mother Church, is not stupidity as many would wish us to think. In fact, to resist the temptation to be gods, calls for the virtues of courage and humility.

Although Lent begins with this meditation on the temptations of Christ and invites us to contemplate our own proclivity to choose sin, we should not be contented to just remain here. A hurdler soon learns that if he starts looking at the hurdles, he is going to fall right on his face. He must fix his gaze on a point at the finish line, and the hurdles will seem to just pass by his eyesight almost unnoticed as he focuses intently on the goal. Well, that's the essence of Lent. The goal of Lent and our Lenten penitential practices, is not Lent. It is to prepare for the triumph of Christ over temptation, sin and death. Our gaze must be fixed on Easter because our Lord’s resurrection is irrefutable proof that sin and death will not have the last say. And so, as we allow ourselves to follow our Lord into the spiritual wilderness of these forty days, we are assured that despite the temptations to turn our backs on God and pretend to be like gods, we have the assistance of the Holy Spirit to guide us back to acknowledge that there is only one God and that “you must worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone.”

Season of death and rebirth

First Sunday of Lent Year B

Climate change proponents are painting a scenario that is not too different from the Deluge that destroyed (or almost destroyed) the world and all its inhabitants during the time of Noah. Global warming, according to the “science,” will result in accelerated melting of polar caps and which in turn would lead to coastal towns (where half the world’s population lives) and islands in the middle of the oceans being swallowed up by sea water in another decade. Remember the apocalyptic movie 2012. Now, I know that what I am going to say next may result in me being labelled as a looney climate change denier that ought to be locked up for the good of humanity, but I’m going to say it anyway. Didn’t God just promise Noah in the first reading that “the waters shall never again be a flood to destroy all things of flesh”? Now, if you refuse to take God at His word, would that make you a bible denier?

Well, on this First Sunday of Lent, I do not intend to lead you down a rabbit hole of deciding whether to believe in scientific truths or biblical truths. We have far greater concerns. We would need to reconcile the first and second reading which speaks of the flood waters encountered by Noah with the bone-dry wilderness described in the gospel, the scene of our Lord’s temptation. What more, Saint Mark’s version of the temptation story lacks the depth and content of the other two versions found in the gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. What the other two accounts spell out in 11-13 verses is succinctly summarised in two verses in today’s gospel. “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness and he remained there for forty days, and was tempted by Satan. He was with the wild beasts, and the angels looked after him.”

There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between these two themes - flood and desert - except for the period of the ordeal which both Noah and our Lord had to endure - forty days (and forty nights). Who could forget that Israel had to endure forty years in the wilderness after her escape from Egypt and before she was allowed to enter the Promised Land. But the Old Testament is punctuated with numerous stories which mention 40 days including the following:

1.     It rained 40 days and nights before the water covered the earth during Noah’s time;

2.     Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days and nights;

3.     The scouts of Israel explored the Promised Land for 40 days;

4.     Goliath challenged the Israelites to a fight each day for 40 days;

5.     The meal delivered by an angel sustained Elijah for 40 days in the desert;

6.     Ezekiel bears the punishment of Israel for 40 days;

7.     God postpones the destruction of Nineveh by 40 days, giving the city time to repent.

Each of the above certainly marks a new era in salvation history. It is the bridge between an old way of life which is passing, and a new one which is dawning. So, forty is a number of punishment and repentance, testing and resting, and, above all else, absolute dependence on God. Whenever God wants to do something significant, He does it in 40 days (or years). Forty is associated with almost each new development in the history of God’s mighty acts, especially of salvation.

The biblical symbolism of 40 has an intriguing analogy in the natural world. Forty weeks is the traditional number of weeks for a pregnancy. I know that if you do the math - 9 times 30 divided by 7 is 38.57142 weeks. But putting aside medical science and precision of mathematical calculations, pregnancy is indeed an apt model for the biblical periods above. It begins with the intensity of the moment of conception, is followed by a time marked by both pain and joyful anticipation, and then, only after this period of postponement, is there the birth of someone new. It is most fitting then that the new era of salvation began with a pregnancy: Mary’s The Church also uses the image of pregnancy and the birth of a baby to describe the first sacrament, the doorway to salvation - baptism. Interestingly and incidentally, the 40-day Genesis flood also prefigures baptism.

And then, we have the 40 days of Lent. The connexions among faithful endurance, spiritual renewal, and baptism in particular are driven home for us each Lent, at the end of which we are called to renew our baptismal vows. In this way, we participate in Christ’s own desert experience, which ended with His own baptism.

This season of Lent beckons us to embark on our own 40-day exodus. It’s not going to get easier as temptations often appear sweeter when it is denied. But as much as the tempter seems to have his way with us, as he did with our Lord, know that the One who truly has power over us and can guide us is the Holy Spirit. For as the Holy Spirit led our Lord into the wilderness for forty days, it is the same spirit who will lead us into the Spirit-filled wilderness of Lent. As you can see, scripture equips us with many models for this spiritual sojourn. Whether it’s to weather our own floods, patiently wait for God’s answer to our prayers, survive the desert of our human experience, slay our own Goliaths, undergo repentance and transformation, Lent is the time for spiritual action and passion—knowing ultimately that it is the Holy Spirit who leads us and our Lord who journeys with us, who acts within us, and suffers for us and with us. Don’t just take my word for it. Trust the “science,” the theological science of the Bible.

The Heart of Temptation

First Sunday of Lent Year A

It’s Lent again, time to double or triple our efforts to get holy. Strangely enough, this is the time of the year, when temptation doesn’t get any sweeter or more alluring. The more we wish to grow in intimacy with God, the greater would be Satan’s effort to frustrate that goal. At the beginning of his pontificate, our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who is fond of speaking about the devil as a real being rather than just some impersonal concept, had this to say about temptation: “Temptation is a normal part of life's struggle, and anyone who claims to be immune from it is either a little angel visiting from heaven or "a bit of an idiot.”” He added that the biggest problem in the world isn't temptation or sin, rather it is people deluding themselves into believing that they're not sinners and losing all sense of sin.  That is why the Church begins this First Sunday in Lent with a meditation of the temptation of Christ. Yes, it is both challenging and comforting to acknowledge that no one is immune to temptation. Not even a hero. Not even a nobody. Not even people like you and me. And certainly not even Christ, the sinless One, the Son of God.

From the waters of the Jordan, the Spirit leads our Lord into the harsh wilderness to be tempted by Satan. The gospel presents this ordeal as an escalating series of three temptations. The first temptation is most subtle, seems harmless, innocent and even rationally necessary. The second is less so, but yet the lure of an audience could be interpreted as giving glory to God for a wondrous miracle. But the third temptation is the most blatant and audacious. All three are attempts by the Enemy to divert our Lord from the path of human suffering, the way of the cross, and ultimately from the obedience to the Father’s plan that His mission entails.

The first temptation runs: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into loaves.” What seems apparent to most people is that the devil wishes for our Lord to perform a miracle to relieve the suffering of His physical needs – to do something for His own personal benefit. Nothing wrong with that. But the real focus of this temptation is on the identity and power of Jesus. What was declared in public by the Father at the baptism, “This is my beloved Son”, is now tested in private. The temptation is not really about food but about turning our Lord away from the path chosen for Him by the Father. His mission is not to serve Himself by exploiting His divine prerogatives but to serve others by a life of heroic sacrifice. And that is why our Lord answers, “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” God’s Word, God’s will for us, and our obedience to Him takes priority.

The second temptation brings our Lord to the holy city of Jerusalem where the devil perches Him high on the parapet of the Temple and utters these words, “If you are the Son of God ... throw yourself down”. Why was the Temple chosen? Well, this is the place where the Jews believed God had chosen to dwell among His people. Just as no one is immune to temptation, no place is also immune from the devil’s snares; not even the “holiest place“ on earth. As in the first temptation, the divine Sonship of Jesus is central to the test. This time the temptation is buttressed with a quotation from Scripture that promises God’s protection through His holy angels. Immediately one notices how the tempter adjusts himself to the one being tempted, the devil uses the same method as used by the Lord, the Word of God, to continue his assault. This second temptation is essentially a challenge to the trustworthiness of God. Satan wants Jesus to subject His Father’s promises to verification. It is an attempt to manipulate God into action, just like so many of us do in prayer. To which our Lord rightly answers, “You must not put the Lord your God to the test.” God is not on trial. We are. He doesn’t need to prove Himself. Rather, it is we who must prove our faith in Him.

The third temptation brings our Lord to the summit of a very high mountain. The purpose is to give Him a panoramic view of all the kingdoms of the world. This time the devil’s mask comes off. Subtle insinuations have proven ineffective. Now the ambition of Satan is laid open to view. Peering out at the great empires of the world, the devil says, “I will give you all these if you fall at my feet and worship me.” In essence, our Lord is being offered a shortcut to achieving His messianic objectives. Here, authority and power are handed to Him on a silver platter without Him having to pay for them with the cost of His life’s sacrifice on the Cross. In exchange, Satan wants nothing less than a brazen act of idolatry. Jesus is asked to repudiate the Father by surrendering Himself to the lordship of Satan. Our Lord rejects this last offer, “Be off Satan! For scripture says: You must worship the Lord your God, and serve Him alone.”

The last temptation actually exposes the true nature of the first two temptations and in fact, all other temptations. It is the repudiation of God. The ultimate goal of Satan is to keep us from worshipping the One he hates. As a master of persuasion, Satan easily deceives mankind into focusing on anything but God. Hardly any of us would admit that we would blatantly worship the Devil. But the devil’s temptation is more subtle. Secular society often finds itself believing that it has no need for God – as long as we can eradicate world hunger, find a cure to cancer, seek popular support for our political agenda and economic programmes of establishing economic justice and world peace – then there is no place for God in our lives. As attractive as this idea may be, the bottom line is that unless we are prepared to submit ourselves humbly to God in total obedience, all these man-made solutions would fail. Whenever we believe that we can move ahead with human progress and solutions without any reference to God, we have knowingly or unknowingly, fallen at the feet of Satan and worshipped him. As G. K. Chesterton once said, “For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”

The devil’s last request is a parody of the worship which is due to God. In fact, if there is anyone who deserves our kneeling and worship, it is God alone. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI had once remarked: “Kneeling does not come from any culture — it comes from the Bible.” Wise men knelt, Peter and the apostles knelt, lepers knelt, rulers knelt, Gentiles knelt, even men possessed by the devil knelt (Mark 5:6). They knelt only to the King of Kings. But even this Great King chose to kneel. He knelt to wash the feet of His disciples. In the garden of Gethsemane, He “knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41). On the other hand, there is one who will never ever kneel. ‘The devil has no knees,” wrote Abba Apollo, a desert Father of the Church who lived around 300 AD, “he cannot kneel; he cannot adore; he cannot pray; he can only look down his nose in contempt. Being unwilling to bend the knee at the name of Jesus is the essence of evil. (cf Is 45:23, Rom 14:11)” This by far, is the greatest irony. The Being that chooses to kneel to no one, now demands that the Son of God kneels to him.

The devil is no fiction. He is very real. But so is God. In a world where temptations seem to lurk around every corner, it may be prudent to return to God in prayer, always seeking His grace and assistance to face the wiles and lies of the enemy. Without God, nothing is possible, we are paralysed. With God in our lives, everything is possible. This is real discipleship — complete dependence on the Lord in everything. Our lives should be Christ-sufficient and not self-sufficient. This is the only way to see through and resist the temptations of Satan. Let our hearts be humbled during this Lenten season to place our entire trust in the Lord, and with Him, let us confidently stand up to the enemy and declare: “Be off Satan!