Are You Ready To Fight?

 

Deacon Dave · Are You Ready To Fight?

Homily for The First Sunday in Lent, February 26, 2023. Gospel of St. Matthew 4:1-11. Theme: Are You Ready to Fight? 

Every year the Season of Lent calls us to a deeper relationship with God which includes, of course, a more intentional love for our neighbor. And both of these things not just in theory, but in fact and deed. Scripture and the experience of the saints teach us that the three spiritual practices of Lent - prayer, almsgiving and fasting - are immensely helpful for us in this regard. Prayer brings us into conscious contact with God as we converse with Him from our hearts. Fasting empowers us to say “no” to ourselves so that we can say “yes” to the needs of others. And almsgiving teaches us generosity and builds up within us a sense of gratitude to God for the blessings we have received. 

But the thing to remember when planning out these Lenten practices for ourselves is that they must be personalized. This means that if they are to be effective in helping us grow in love, they have to focus on our own particular struggles in living the Christian life. This is why the Church doesn’t mandate that we all say the exact same prayers, or abstain from the exact same foods, or give our alms to the exact same charities. Our Lenten penances must be tailor made for us so that they become truly useful weapons for us in the spiritual battle that is at the heart of today’s Gospel. And that brings me to the one thing that we will all have in common this Lent. 

We will each have to face the ancient Enemy of the human race who doesn’t want to see these good things happen in our lives. As we see in the Genesis story, Satan is a cunning liar who is envious of our relationship with God, a relationship that he freely gave up. It’s a choice that torments him for all eternity and his overriding goal is to entice us to make the same horrible decision. To this end, he and his demon-minions will surely but slyly attack our well-intentioned Lenten resolutions. He will try to convince us that we already pray enough and that, after all, we’re not monks or nuns living in a monastery. He will work at weakening our decision to give up whatever we have chosen as our Lenten penance, making us think that we deserve a break now and then. And of course, that last thing he wants is for us to become more generous by giving alms because greed is one of his specialties. 

But we need not fear facing the Ancient Enemy because we will not be fighting this spiritual battle alone. Through the blessed ashes that we received last Wednesday, we were called to recommit to Christ, to repent of sin and believe in the Gospel. If we are living our Lent with sincerity and faith in our hearts then we will have with us the ever-abiding presence of Jesus as Brother and Companion. He lived in total solidarity with us including temptation, real temptation. He wasn’t just play-acting or pretending to be one of us. He leads us into the battle and shows us how to fight so as to win. So let’s keep our eyes on Him and our ears open to the words He speaks to us in today’s Gospel. 

Jesus said: “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” There is spiritual nourishment and supernatural power in the Word of God. Scripture makes the Lord present to us in a mystical but very real way. It’s hard for us to comprehend this mystery, but the saints tell us to reverence and receive the Word with the same kind of devotion that we show towards the Eucharist, for both are ways in which we come into the Divine Presence. There are many ways for us to do this. For example, we can hear it proclaimed in the liturgy or meditate on it privately while reading the Bible in our own homes. And it’s a good idea to find a verse of Scripture that deals with a particular vice or struggle in our lives and then prayerfully repeat this verse when tempted, trusting in the power of God's Word. 

Which brings us to the next declaration that Jesus spoke to Satan: “It is written: You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” We test people whom we do not trust. It seems to me that Jesus is telling us here to work on building up a relationship of trust in God. We need to be firm in the conviction that He really does want only what is best and good for us. We must reject the devil’s lies, so often repeated by our media and our culture, that tell us that God is a tyrant, a bully, out to ruin our fun and restrict our freedom. This is the deception that is behind every temptation and it’s the ancient lie that Satan has been whispering into the ears of the human race ever since the days of Adam and Eve. So, in times of temptation the best, the easiest and the most powerful response, the most powerful prayer to keep repeating is this: “Jesus, I trust in You.” 

Lastly, Jesus proclaimed : “It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Satan’s third temptation is an enticement to worship ourselves instead of our Creator; to decide for ourselves what is true or not, to decide for ourselves what is right or wrong. He wants us to place ourselves upon the altar of self-promotion and then to worship there. It’s the same old tactic he used on Adam and Eve by telling them that they could become like gods if only they would eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil. But we expose this lie every time we bow in spirit before God and confess our sins with a humble honest heart. We defeat this temptation every time we gather for Mass to offer true worship to the Father, through his Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. By our heartfelt worship we not only trample upon this temptation but we grow deeper in our relationship with Jesus and stronger in the spiritual power he holds out to us. 

Today’s Gospel promises that we can all share in the victory of Jesus over temptation in our lives. We can each be filled with the power of the Risen Christ by opening our hearts to the graces that God wants to pour into us through daily prayer, through generosity towards others, and through fidelity to our Lenten penance. We can each confidently face the Ancient Enemy armed with the Word of God, strengthened by trust in Jesus, and spiritually energized by true worship. Temptations will never ever go away. They are part and parcel of human life as we all know and they are found everywhere. Victory over temptation, however, is not found everywhere but comes only through, with and in a personal relationship with Jesus the Messiah, Son of God and Savior. To Him be glory and praise forever. Amen.