Forty Days
In today’s epic Gospel scene, Jesus relives in His flesh the history of Israel. We’ve already seen that like Israel, Jesus has passed through water, been called God’s beloved Son (see Luke 3:22; Exodus 4:22). Now, as Israel was tested for forty years in the wilderness, Jesus is led into the desert to be tested for forty days and nights (see Exodus 15:25). He faces the temptations put to Israel: Hungry, He’s tempted to grumble against God for food (see Exodus 16:1-13). As Israel quarreled at Massah, He’s tempted to doubt God’s care (see Exodus 17:1-6). When the Devil asks His homage, He’s tempted to do what Israel did in creating the golden calf (see Exodus 32). Jesus fights the Devil with the Word of God, three times quoting from Moses’ lecture about the lessons Israel was supposed to learn from its wilderness wanderings (see Deuteronomy 8:3; 6:16; 6:12-15). Why do we read this story on the first Sunday of Lent? Because like the biblical sign of forty (see Genesis 7:12; Exodus 24:18; 34:28; 1 Kings 19:8; Jonah 3:4), the forty days of Lent are a time of trial and purification. Lent is to teach us what we hear over and over in today’ss readings. “Call upon me, and I will answer,” the Lord promises in today’s Psalm. Paul promises the same thing in today’s Epistle (quoting Deuteronomy 30:14; Isaiah 28:16; Joel 2:32). This was Israel’s experience, as Moses reminds his people in today’s First Reading: “We cried to the Lord…and He heard.” But each of us is tempted, as Israel was, to forget the great deeds He works in our lives, to neglect our birthright as His beloved sons and daughters. Like the litany of remembrance Moses prescribes for Israel, we should see in the Mass a memorial of our salvation, and “bow down in His presence,” offering ourselves in thanksgiving for all He has given us.
St. Ambrose
Commentary on St. Luke, IV, 7-12
“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil”
You must recall how the first Adam was cast out of Paradise into the desert if you are to attend to the way in which the second Adam (1Cor 15,45) returns from the desert to paradise. Notice, then, how the first punishment was unloosed in just the same way as it had been knotted, and how the divine blessings were restored along the same lines as those that went before.
Adam emerges out of virgin earth, Christ comes forth from a Virgin; the former was made in God’s image, the latter is God’s Image itself (Col 1,15); the former was set above all irrational beasts, the latter above every living creature. Foolishness came through a woman, wisdom through a Virgin; death came from a tree, life from the cross. The one, being divested of spiritual clothing, wove a garment of leaves from a tree; the other, divested of this world’s clothing, no longer sought material dress (Jn 19,23).
Adam was cast out into the desert; Christ comes forth from the desert, for he was fully cognizant of where he would find condemned man, whom he would lead back into paradise set free from his sins… For how, without a guide, could he who had lost his way in Paradise through lack of a guide, rediscover in the desert the road he had lost? Temptations are numerous there, the struggle for virtue is difficult and false moves into error are easy… So let us follow Christ, as it is written: “The Lord your God shall you follow, holding fast to him alone” (Dt 13,5)… Let us follow in his footsteps and we shall be able to return to paradise from the desert .
Pope Benedict XVI
Angelus Address, February 21, 2010
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Last Wednesday, with the penitential Rite of Ashes we began Lent, a Season of spiritual renewal in preparation for the annual celebration of Easter. But what does it mean to begin the Lenten journey? The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent illustrates it for us with the account of the temptations of Jesus in the desert. The Evangelist St Luke recounts that after receiving Baptism from John, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil” (Lk 4: 1). There is a clear insistence on the fact that the temptations were not just an incident on the way but rather the consequence of Jesus’ decision to carry out the mission entrusted to him by the Father to live to the very end his reality as the beloved Son who trusts totally in him. Christ came into the world to set us free from sin and from the ambiguous fascination of planning our life leaving God out. He did not do so with loud proclamations but rather by fighting the Tempter himself, until the Cross. This example applies to everyone: the world is improved by starting with oneself, changing, with God’s grace, everything in one’s life that is not going well.
The first of the three temptations to which Satan subjects Jesus originates in hunger, that is, in material need: “If you are the Son of God command this stone to become bread”. But Jesus responds with Sacred Scripture: “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Lk 4: 3-4; cf. Dt 8: 3). Then the Devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth and says: all this will be yours if, prostrating yourself, you worship me. This is the deception of power, and an attempt which Jesus was to unmask and reject: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve” (cf. Lk 4: 5-8; Dt 6: 13). Not adoration of power, but only of God, of truth and love. Lastly, the Tempter suggests to Jesus that he work a spectacular miracle: that he throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple and let the angels save him so that everyone might believe in him. However, Jesus answers that God must never be put to the test (cf. Dt 6: 16). We cannot “do an experiment” in which God has to respond and show that he is God: we must believe in him! We should not make God “the substance” of “our experiment”. Still referring to Sacred Scripture, Jesus puts the only authentic criterion obedience, conformity to God’s will, which is the foundation of our existence before human criteria. This is also a fundamental teaching for us: if we carry God’s word in our minds and hearts, if it enters our lives, if we trust in God, we can reject every kind of deception by the Tempter. Furthermore, Christ’s image as the new Adam emerges clearly from this account. He is the Son of God, humble and obedient to the Father, unlike Adam and Eve who in the Garden of Eden succumbed to the seduction of the evil spirit, of being immortal without God.
Lent is like a long “retreat” in which to re-enter oneself and listen to God’s voice in order to overcome the temptations of the Evil One and to find the truth of our existence. It is a time, we may say, of spiritual “training” in order to live alongside Jesus not with pride and presumption but rather by using the weapons of faith: namely prayer, listening to the Word of God and penance. In this way we shall succeed in celebrating Easter in truth, ready to renew our baptismal promises. May the Virgin Mary help us so that, guided by the Holy Spirit, we may live joyfully and fruitfully this Season of grace. May she intercede in particular for me and for my collaborators of the Roman Curia, who begin the Spiritual Exercises this evening.
After the Angelus:
I offer a warm greeting to all the English-speaking visitors present for this Angelus prayer, especially the boys and girls of the London Oratory Junior Choir. In today’s Gospel the Church invites us to contemplate Christ’s victory over temptation and to imitate his complete obedience to the Father’s will. May the Lenten Season which we have now begun draw us closer to the Lord in prayer and prepare us to celebrate worthily his victory over sin and death at Easter. Upon all of you I invoke God’s abundant Blessings!
I wish you all a peaceful Sunday and a good Lenten journey.
