First Sunday of Lent, Year C
A Lenten Gospel Enquiry
Introduction
It is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent and I am sitting here reflecting on the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. I wrote a Cardijn inspired Lenten program in 2022. It was titled If Today You Hear His Voice …. In the years that followed, I learned more about how Gospel Enquiries can be written. During this season of Lent, I will post edited versions of the Gospel Enquiries that I had put in the book, starting this week and one each week, for the five Sundays of Lent.
We pray in the Our Father “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” because the common human experience is to be tempted to replace God’s will with our own will. Jesus knew this well and he battled with that temptation throughout his life. We begin this season of Lent with a reflection on Jesus’ experience of being tempted to put himself before his Father. He shows us that we have to be uncompromising in our response to temptation.
Joe Battaglia, an American evangelist, reflects on the place of Jesus in the world. He makes the following comment about our struggle to be like Jesus in his book The Politically Incorrect Jesus:
Our culture encourages us to accumulate things, to have options, to focus on ourselves. The problem is that the more things we accumulate, the more mass we create. And the more mass, the more pull. Soon we cannot pull ourselves away from the things we’ve accumulated because they have such a hold on us. They control us; we do not control them. We attempt to break free, but the pull is too strong.
Battaglia goes on to say that the only way of breaking free is to surrender to God, to do as Jesus did when he was tempted, which is to put God and God’s Will first.
The Gospel
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted there by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry.
Then the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.”
But Jesus replied, “Scripture says: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’”
Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me, and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall be yours.”
But Jesus answered him, “Scripture says: ‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.’”
Then he led him to Jerusalem and made him stand on the parapet of the Temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said to him, “throw yourself down from here, for scripture says: “‘He will put his angels in charge of you to guard you’; and again: ‘They will hold you up on their hands, in case you hurt your foot against a stone.’”
But Jesus answered him, “It has been said: ‘You must not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time. (Luke 4:1-13)
The Enquiry
See
What are the three temptations experienced by Jesus? How are they introduced? To which aspects of the human condition do they relate? How does Jesus respond? What do Jesus’ responses tell you about what he values?
Why do the temptations by Satan happen at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? What part does the desire to escape the limitations of temporal existence play in this Gospel story?
How do the three temptations and Jesus’ response to each affect your understanding of situations or issues affecting you in the world?
Judge
What do you think about the Gospel story you have just read? How realistic or reasonable is what you have read?
Ideally, how should people handle temptations in their lives? Think about the interaction of power, freedom and loving God in Jesus’ experience of temptation in the desert. Do you think that these elements are important in your own experiences of being tempted?
What is the essential element in Jesus’ exercise of freedom and power in this Gospel event? Does this element challenge your faith?
Act
What needs to change in the world so that people deal with temptations in ways consistent with Jesus’ example?
What action can you carry out this week that will contribute to the change you would like to see in the world?
Who can you involve in your action, when, how often and how?
Image source: Fr Lawrence Lew OP (Creator) The Temptation of Christ, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Worth reading: Battaglia, J. (2014). The Politically Incorrect Jesus. Recipe, Washington: BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC. https://books.apple.com/au/book/the-politically-incorrect-jesus/id956335060.