First Sunday of Lent
Fr Dominic’s Homily
Yesterday David Baldwin gave us a terrific talk about Pilgrimage. The do’s and don’ts and what to pack in our rucksacks. What to bring and what to leave behind despite temptation.
Today we hear about the temptations of Jesus in his wanderings in the desert. And we hear that Satan tempts Jesus in three quite specific ways.
So why does Satan use these three ways of temptation? It’s because they exactly mirror the three ways in which Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden all those years before when they took fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why was Eve tempted by the fruit originally? It was because the fruit was:
Was good for food
A delight to the eyes
Desirable to make one wise
These three temptations correspond to:
Sins of the flesh and pleasure.
Desire for possessions.
Vanity – putting ourselves over God. Pride.
It’s the so called triple concupiscence that Adam and Eve fell in temptation to as a result of their complete freedom to choose good or bad.
Now we have all inherited that threefold distortion of desire as a result of that fall. They are like a threefold computer virus that we have all inherited on our system that stops us from operating properly as human beings.
And this is part of the reason for which Jesus came into the world. To wipe away and undo the effects of this threefold original sin that we all suffer from and to do a system reset so that we can become the people he destined us to be from the start.
So this is why Satan tempts Jesus with firstly turning stones into bread. This corresponds to all sins of the flesh. All that our human bodies yearn for. Jesus could have easily turned some stones into bread from hunger but he resisted.
Secondly Satan tempts Jesus with the glory and splendour of all the great kingdoms of the world. They belong to Satan. Why is that? Because Adam and Eve were originally stewards of all creation and so would have owned all these. But they forfeited them through their fall. So they were subjugated by the devil who now has a rightful claim to them all through our sin.
Jesus resists this second temptation.
Finally the devil tempts Jesus to jump from the parapet of the temple - the highest place in the area as he knows that his guardian angels will catch him before he hits the ground. The sight of Jesus levitating in front of so many people would prove his divinity without the need for a crucifixion and that’s what Satan really wanted.
So this temptation corresponds to putting one’s own importance in front of God’s. Vanity and pride. Jesus resists.
During the discussion between Jesus and the devil the only weapons that they use on eachother is scripture. There is no violence. There is no clever philosophical argument.
Jesus of course uses perfect quotes of scripture to clarify his position in the first two rounds. Satan then decides to use scripture for the third round – but he misquotes. He is the prince of misquoted scripture. He obviously knows his scripture extremely well. But twists it and uses it according to his own purpose. Always beware of denominations that try and do this.
The scripture that Satan uses as you may have noticed is infact part of the very psalm that we heard today. Why does Satan use this psalm? Probably because it was the primary psalm of exorcism used in the Old Testament times by the Jews to rid people of demons. So he was very familiar with it and could quote it fluently. And it fits his argument. Although he leaves out the very parts that are derogatory towards him.
So we can see that where Adam fell Jesus conquers the temptations. He is the New Adam who undoes the effects of the fall. That’s the meaning behind todays Gospel.
So what does this mean for us? As we wander into the desert a little this lent we pray, fast and give alms. These three spiritual weapons help to fight against vanity, sins of the flesh and love of possessions. So in a way we too are counteracting the effects of Adams fall.
And as we continue to wander through the difficult parts of the pilgrimage that correspond to our lives towards the promised land of heaven may we never forget the power of scripture and to keep a bible packed in our rucksacks as we journey through lent towards Easter.