Get Away, Satan!

February 10, 2008

First Sunday of Lent

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’” Genesis 3:2-3

At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him. Matthew 4:10-11

Piety

Keep my spirit steady and willing, O God.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/021008.shtml

Jesus went out into the desert to pray and to fast as a preparation for his ministry. We go into our Lent to pray and to fast. Good works are also an emphasis of our piety during Lent. Doing something extra for the needy brings to us closeness to Christ. Christ was tempted by the evil spirit. The three temptations of Jesus are real in all our lives. His temptation to change rocks into bread is a temptation of the flesh. He needed food for his hunger. Our hunger can make us aware of how Christ identifies with the hungry from his human experience of hunger. His temptation to jump from the temple with the promise of the angels catching him is the temptation to win people by doing something flashy.

Christ claims our heart and our mind by his gentleness. His call on us comes out of the ordinary of our life. He is not going to rob us of our freedom to follow him by something extraordinary. The evil spirit offers power. Christ offers service of one another. The temptations of Christ in the desert are templates of how the devil would try to win any one of us over.

Pleasure, power and fame are, in one form or another, the rock bottom of every temptation we suffer in life. They are the driving forces of our world. Imagine what our world would be like if Christ were the driving force. Lent is the time when we stand up against the temptations of our world and we select God over the prince of darkness. I have always needed Lent to save myself from the flood of temptations my world is filled with. The glitter of our world with its Madison Avenue approach clamors for my attention and distracts me from my purpose. Lent claims back my attention to God.

We need to study our temptations if we are going to do something about evil in our world. Temptations can be our most privileged moments before God if we resist them. When our road is sweet and rosy and everything seems to be claiming our attention, we are caught up in the glitter of the gifts of God. Appearances claim our attention. Outright evil claims few adherents among our numbers. It is sometimes too easy to get lost in the gifts of God and lose sight of the gift-giver. Too much is always a problem. Temptations to food, honor, glory, power and whatever are our attractions to the gifts of God run wild in the excess we are lost in. When we resist our temptations we are choosing God over his gifts.

Action

Actions flow out of plans. We need to have a plan of action for Lent.

What will I do for the Lord this day is a question I need to ask each day. My apostolic plan is the review of the ways I am a prisoner of the world, the flesh and the devil. Lent gives us the chance to do something about our attraction to the good things in life. It offers us the chance to bring our lives more in conformity with the plan of God. Anyone can love the gifts of God. It takes saints to love the God of the gifts.

“Do I love what I get out of a person more than the person?” is the question Lent asks about all our friends and God.