First Reading Commentary
The Israelites are offering their
firstfruits and proclaiming the love and mercy of God by contrasting their
former nomadic existence with the joy of possessing their own country; a
"land flowing with milk and honey."
Gratitude for God's abundant love and
kindness is the theme to be underscored here.
Lent is a time for serious prayer, reflection and meditation; a time for
penance, a time to remind ourselves of the importance of God in our lives. Serious sin makes us like nomads. It separates us from our heavenly Father and
from the family of God which we have in the Church. The Sacrament of Penance restores it. This overwhelming display of our Lord's love
and mercy deserves all the gratitude we can muster, especially when considering
the times that we're not so loving and not so merciful.
This Reading is symbolic of our Lenten
journey. Like the wandering Aramean we
are also strangers in a foreign land.
The Israelites cried out to the Lord, Who heard their cry and freed them
from bondage, guiding them along the way during their Exodus. We have also been freed from our bondage to
sin and death by the Sacrifice and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. By becoming Man, we are reminded that our God
not only guides us along the way but also experienced our labor, toil and
affliction first hand.
At the end of our forty days we rejoice in
our Savior's victory at Easter, the day our Lord destroyed that which kept us
in bondage. Sundays are not included in
the forty days of the Lenten disciplines.
Instead they are weekly reminders of the glorious Easter mystery.
By His Resurrection
Jesus has gained for us, not a land of milk and honey, but a promised new life
of eternal joy and peace. When the
journey of this life is traveled faithfully, the light at the end of the tunnel
reveals the beatific vision – the unimaginable joy of what eye has not seen nor
ear has heard (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9).
Second Reading Commentary
"Brothers and sisters: What does
Scripture say?" As we begin this
Season of Lent, what a marvelous invitation to prayerfully study the pages of
Scripture. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI called
a meeting of the Synod of Bishops in October of 2008. The theme was: "The Word of God in the
Life and Mission of the Church."
The Holy Father said he hoped that meeting would help Catholics realize
the importance of the bible.
A simple confession of belief in Jesus
coupled with a belief in the heart is not a no strings attached, free pass for
getting into heaven. Confession with the
lips is not simply a belief in the Person of Christ; it's also a belief in
everything He taught by word and deed.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church
teaches that the Name of "Jesus" contains all: God and Man and the
whole economy of creation and salvation.
To pray "Jesus" is to invoke Him and call Him within us. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes
the Name of Jesus is invoking and welcoming the Son of God Who loved them and
gave Himself up for them (cf. CCC 2666).
Thus the profession/heart formula is a practice of faith in daily
life.
Gospel Commentary
Certain numbers in Scripture are
symbolic. Even when a literal
understanding applies, there still is often a symbolic representation as
well. Forty is symbolic of a long period
of time in which there will be difficulties and temptations to try to overcome;
but it also represents a time of preparation to receive graces which will flow
from the Hand of God. Noah was in the
ark as rain poured from the heavens for forty days and forty nights (cf. Genesis 7:4---8:6). The Israelites wandered through the desert
for forty years to get to the Promised Land.
Moses went up the mountain to be with God and was there for forty days
and forty nights (cf. Exodus 24:18). There are other examples in Scripture where
the number forty is prominent.
In this Gospel Jesus spends forty days in
the desert. You know the old saying: You
can't arrive at Easter Sunday without getting through Good Friday first. A period of struggle followed by a reward
would seem to be God's infallible plan for eternal bliss; why else would a
Cross, an apparatus used for severe punishment and execution, be a sign of
eternal salvation? No pain, no gain may
be the universal plan, but it's a plan that man has tried to avoid with great
fervor since the fall of humanity.
Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and is
led by the Spirit. Certainly our own
baptism fills us with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is led to the desert. The
Church, guided by the Spirit, leads us to the desert every year to prepare for
Easter. The desert is certainly a very
real place but it also can be representative of what has happened to humanity. Man was created in the splendor of glory and
dwelled in paradise; but man turned away from God and fell from grace and now
that garden of paradise is a barren desert.
One would have to think that this Gospel is
recorded solely for our benefit. The
devil trying to overcome God with temptations is surely a lesson in
futility. The love of God for His people
is evidenced here as the God of Paradise and Perfection humbles Himself and
enters man's lowly desert and confronts the very distraction which turned man
away from His Creator and His God. The
outcome of our Lord's visit to the desert finds the devil's strategy and
tactics unsuccessful, unlike his encounter in Eden.
Jesus withstanding the temptations of
Satan, though, shouldn't come as a surprise to any Christian; therefore, our
Lord withstanding the tempter's attacks really isn't the point of this
Gospel. What is likely occurring here is
that Jesus is identifying the real enemy to us.
We have been baptized and are sent to spread the Good News; but
belonging to God as His very own children and carrying out His plan for us will
certainly bring opposition. Opposition
most often comes under the guise of flesh and blood and other forms of created
beauty which appeal to our fallen, therefore, weak nature. But Jesus is showing us who is hiding behind
flesh and blood, and all those alluring temptations. While the devil can hide from us he can't
hide from our Lord and in this Gospel story Jesus exposes the father of lies
and brings him out into the open desert.
There are two sides to Lent: on one side it
is a time for acknowledging the occasions we have succumbed to enticing ideas
and have turned away from God; but on the other side it is a determined resolve
to do penance and gracefully remain in the Bosom of our Lord.
During these forty days, much like the
Israelites, we will journey through the desert together and look forward to the
Promised Land of Easter. And like
Christ, one should be encouraged to go into the desert alone, a place set aside
for personal prayer and silence. While
alone in the desert our Lord's garments are wedged between a pair of clasped
hands in prayer so that when the tempter arrives, faithful endurance will
prevail causing him to depart.
Scripture reads: "Resist the devil and
he will fly from you" (James 4:7). Our Holy Father of happy memory, Saint John
Paul II, defined Lent as a time for "intense prayer" and for
"serious discernment about our lives" and our figurative desert is
the place to do both.
In Saint Matthew's version of the
temptation in the desert, after Satan tempts Jesus to turn a stone into bread,
our Lord's response of, "One does not live on bread alone" is
continued with "but by every word that proceeds from the Mouth of
God" (Matthew 4:4). On a translation note, in Saint Luke's Gospel
the Latin Vulgate does include the words which translate as "but by every
word of God" even though it is absent from the liturgical text. The bread that doesn't satisfy is the manna
that was given to the Israelites (cf.
Exodus 16). It's interesting,
though, that in this exchange between our Savior and the devil there are three
words which are synonymous with Jesus.
He is the "Stone" which the builders rejected (cf. Psalm [117] 118:22, Matthew 21:42, Mark
12:10, Luke 20:17, Acts 4:11, 1 Peter 2:4; 2:7), He is the
"Bread" of life (cf. John 6:35;
6:48), and He is the "Word" of God (cf. John 1:1). And this
spiritual diet of Word and Bread are exactly what we receive respectively at
Mass from the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist
