Lenten Journey 2011

Bring us back to you.
This week we pray for a renewal of our lives.
We are beginning to be more attentive and alert.
We are trying new patterns.
The difficulties we encounter keep us humble.

Let us pray that this Lent will help us reproduce in our lives the self-sacrificing love of Christ.


Matthew 4:1-11

At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert
to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights,
and afterwards he was hungry.
The tempter approached and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
He said in reply,
“It is written:
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil took him to the holy city,
and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him,
“Again it is written,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
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.

It is a tradition to speculate on just what these three temptations of Jesus represent. Perhaps they are the usual pattern of the Tempter by which the Tempter has seduced humanity down through the ages. Perhaps they are pride, envy and lust for certainty through power. They are well-known to those of us who experience deeply our own fallenness. Jesus’ responses to all three human attractions are based solidly in trusting God for His identity rather than having God do tricks so that faith would be unnecessary.

There is the Lenten call to repentance and to our being more prayerful, more generous and more eager to do the works of charity. This is not a dark time or gloomy as we ponder our failures, true they be. Our participation in the envy, greed and pride of Adam and Eve is not ever to be the main picture, dramatic though they be. Jesus’ whole life, His entire embrace of His own humanity is the divine embrace of our own personal and collective selves. We are saved, not alone, by Jesus hanging on the cross of Calvary, but Jesus as He hangs in on His whole life of living faithfully Who His Father has given him to be for us.

“The Lord will overshadow you, and you will find refuge under his wings.” Ps. 91, 4