First Sunday in Lent. March 9th, 2014
As we begin our Lenten observance, we read about the temptation of Christ at the end of his forty-day fast in the desert. We are told at the end of the fast He was hungry and the tempter came. The ashes we received on Wednesday signify our deep desire to enter into our own forty-day period of preparation in order to purify ourselves for the great feast of Easter, so we can enter it with great joy. We too should grow in our hunger during our Forty-day fast, not just for what we have given up, but at the end of our fast more hungry for that Bread which can only satisfy our deepest hunger. You may have not thought about it, but the temptations we face are much like those that Jesus faced and conquered.
The devil, who by the way exists and is a real person, the devil in today’s Gospel presents Jesus with a shortcut from the cross away from the Father’s Holy Will. It is a temptation to do away with the cross, by giving us what we want instead of what we need- in short to take the easy way out and win us over by feeding us at the emotional level, feeding the hunger of our passions instead of our soul, letting us do what we want instead of helping us do what we should, better yet helping us do and live the Holy Will of God instead of our own unholy will (which is really what sin is, doing our own will in opposition to God’s Will). In the temptations, satan basically told Jesus, “you can win them over with these things, but not with the cross, no, definitely not with the cross. They will never follow you by being obedient to the Father’s will even to the cross; that is, even to the point of denying their own wills in order to fulfill the Will of God in their lives.”
So,1st, Satan told Jesus that he could win us over by filling our bellies with the bread of earthly desires and riches, the things of this world. For us if we give into this temptation, we no longer look to God to feel our deepest hunger, we fail to see that only the Word of God, especially the Word of God become flesh, is that which can satisfy our deepest hunger, our hunger for God’s Will.
2nd, Satan said Jesus; you can win them over by amazing them with great feats and unbelievable technological marvels…wow them with great shows of your power. For us, giving into this temptation, we begin to believe we don’t need God any more, our technology can save us—we use own lives to fulfill our own will instead of the God’s Will.
3rd, Satan said you can make them love you not by worshiping and adoring God in order to do the Holy Will of the Father, but instead by giving them power to solve their own problems through politics so they can be released from being dependant on a tyrannical Father God who wants to steal away their freedom and remind them that true love is about self-sacrifice. Giving into this temptation we begin to think that man can save man—that politics alone can save man; then we attempt to build a kingdom of man and his will without any reference to the Kingdom of God and His Will.
The devil likes to give half-truths, and so Jesus was tempted to change the stones into bread. The fact is, Jesus does desires to give us what the devil said would win us over, but not in the way the devil suggests. Jesus wants to give us bread, but not earthly bread, not the things of this world which never totally satisfy our hunger; but instead, Jesus wants to give us not only the Word of God, but the Word of God become flesh; that is, the Bread of Life, His very self, his whole self in the Holy Eucharist--the bread that a man may eat of, and never die by doing his own will-sin, because it is JESUS who is our Life.
Jesus was tempted to reveal his divinity in a spectacular way. Jesus does indeed want to give us great marvels and feats, but again not the kind Satan suggests. Jesus wants to give us the greatest feat and marvel of all, that God would humble Himself, putting His divine power aside and become one of us, so he could die for us. In this, he’d shows us the greatest feat and marvel of love the world has ever seen—The Holy Mass. And because of this feast, this sacrifice, which makes present as well Jesus and His love, this living and ever-new sacrifice allows Jesus to come into each one of us at the Holy Mass during Holy Communion and shows us the Will of the Father.
Jesus was tempted to have all the power of this earth so He could give it to us, in order to make this world into a utopia. Jesus does wants to give us power, but not earthly power which corrupts and fades away, but the power of his divine life, a share in the very nature of God—who is Love itself—the power of the Holy Spirit, the living water that quenches all thirst--True power and all of which comes to us in and through adoration of the Holy Eucharist as the true and Living God. From this comes the power to do not our own will, but the Will of the Father, for as Jesus said…. “my food is to do the Will of the Father…From this comes the is the Kingdom of the Divine Will…that is, the Kingdom whose subjects live in the safety and comfort, and freedom of God’s will.
The temptation in the desert we hear about today was only a prelude leading up to the greatest temptation in the life of Christ, which was during the agony in the garden. This greater temptation was shown very well in the movie The Passion of the Christ, which came out a few years back if you remember. You know, I think, out of all the movies ever made about Jesus’ life, this movie is perhaps one of the most intense and compelling. I don’t believe that any one could watch this movie without feeling profound sadness for the sufferings that Jesus went through in order to gain our salvation by dying for our sins. The jeers and the insults, the numerous beatings and the brutal scourging, these all show us the unfathomable love that our God has for each and every one of us. It should not only move us to profound sadness for our sins, but incredible gratitude for such a loving God to suffer so much to take them away, to forgive them.
One of the most diabolical scenes that this movie portrayed is this greatest temptation of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here, the devil tries to tempt Jesus, by telling Him, that the burden of the sins of humanity is too much to carry for one man. Why suffer for the salvation of man, when so many would respond with ingratitude—It’s just not worth it. It’s very important and if you think about it, the temptation in the Garden is connected to the temptation in the desert that we hear about today. Both are temptations presented to Jesus to abandon His mission to save us by dying in order that He could give us the Eucharist, the bread of eternal life so that we could first in faith adore and then eat of it and be saved by entering into a Holy Communion of love with Him and the Father through Him. Jesus didn’t just die to save us, but He died in order to give us Himself in the Holy Eucharist…The Eucharist is the very source of our strength to fulfill the Father’s Holy Will in our lives; and so, it is through our Faith, Hope and Love in the Holy Eucharist that God saves us and can save others through us.
This connection between the temptations of Christ and the Eucharist is also brought out powerfully in the meditations of Bl. Anna Catherine Emmerich. She was a German Mystic who was only recently Beatified. She was shown the entire life of Christ. According to Blessed Anna, the way the devil tempted our Lord to give up was by showing Him the ingratitude of so many men. This ingratitude was actually the cause of some of our Lords most severe agony—But, this ingratitude of men, according to Bl. Anna Catherine, was shown primarily by those persons who in so many ways insult and outrage Jesus really and truly present in the Holy Eucharist.
According to Bl. Anna this was the worst indifference of men--that Jesus would die in order to save men by giving to them the great gift of His entire self in the Holy Eucharist, and yet some, many in fact, would reject this gift as shown by their unbelief, or failure to appreciate It, through a lack of love, devotion and reverence. They would show it by a lack of participating in the Holy Eucharist through full, active, conscious and fruitful participation, as shown by their interior offering, the offering of themselves and their own wills to God in return for such an outpouring of love, the outpouring of Himself.
In other words, in the Garden Jesus actually saw those souls who would reject and ignore this act of His love shown by their indifferent hearts. And this indifference was most especially shown by their neglect of and profanation of His true presence in the Holy Eucharist. So many would refuse to believe, adore, hope and love Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, that gift of His total self in which he died in order to be our food so that we could become one with Him and the Father in Communion of love lived out in the Father’s Will.
I would like to give you a short excerpt from Bl. Anna Catherine Emmerich’s book called “The Dolores (sorrowful) Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” which brings this all out very beautifully. In this excerpt, she writes of how she was shown some of what caused our Lord the most pain in the Garden:
“I say that often the poorest of men were better lodged in their cottages than the Master of heaven and earth in his churches. (explain) Ah, how deeply did the inhospitality of men grieve Jesus, who had given himself to them to be their food? Truly, there is no need to be rich in order to receive Him who rewards a hundred-fold the glass of cold water given to the thirsty; but how shameful is not our conduct when in giving drink to the Divine Lord who thirsts for our souls, we give him corrupted water in a filthy glass! In consequence of all this neglect, I saw the weak scandalized, the Adorable Sacrament profaned, the Churches deserted, and the priests despised. This state of impurity and negligence extended even to the souls of the faithful who left the tabernacle of their hearts unprepared and uncleansed when Jesus was about to enter them…”
This sorrow of our Blessed Lord was also expressed to St. Faustina when Jesus said to her:
“Oh, how painful it is to Me that souls so seldom unite themselves to Me in Holy Communion. I wait for souls, and they are indifferent to Me in Holy Communion. I love them tenderly and sincerely, and they distrust Me. I want to lavish My graces on them, and they do not want to accept them. They treat Me (in the Holy Eucharist) as a dead object…” (Dairy #1447).
It was in fact, the lack of faith, the outrages, sacrileges and indifference of souls, toward His true presence in the Holy Eucharist that caused Jesus to sweat blood in the Garden.
This Lent temptations will come for us all. Hidden behind all of these temptations is really a temptation to deny the true present of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. It is temptation to deny that the Word of God become Man and is still Man in the Holy Eucharist and so is the true food to fill our deepest hunger, a hunger for the Will of the Father. It is a temptation which tries to makes us not believe, adore, hope and trust, and love the Living God truly present there, thus failing to offering ourselves, in order that we can come in contact with the Divine Power of God-Jesus, so that we can not only resist the temptations of the Devil and our own sins, but grow in our love and union with the Father through the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit and fulfill the will of God in our lives.
One writer wrote the following: “In the Eucharist we have the power of God at our fingertips—accessed only through Faith. We must “see” Jesus in the Eucharist. When I look at the Eucharist do I really believe It is God…Do I really?—if I do, then I should believe that nothing is impossible, if I believe that it is Jesus; that the Eucharist is God.” (author unknown).
In this Lent, let us ask our Lord for the grace of a deeper repentance, a deeper turning back to Him. Lent is a time where we take a serious look at our lives and simply place our dirty dishes, so to speak, in other words our souls, in the cleansing waters of the sacrament of penance. We all have many resolutions in Lent, let us pray that our repentance be one that will change our lives. Let us ask him for the grace to believe, adore, hope and love our Lord even more than we do, He who waits patiently in Love for us in the Eucharist. Let us not neglect Him but with great faith and great reverence, adore Him and receive Him worthily by confessing our sins, doing penance and amending our lives. IN this we console the Heart of Jesus who loves us so very much because the Holy Eucharist is the Heart of Jesus.
Mother of the Eucharist, Mother of the Heart of Jesus, Our Lady of sorrows, pray for us, lead us closer this Lent to Your Son Jesus who is really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Holy Eucharist. Venite adoremus Dominum….come let us adore the Lord…Amen
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