Satan Tempts Christ

   In the liturgy on the First Sunday of Lent we see Our Lord preparing for His public life. Right after His Baptism by John the Baptist He retreated to the desert for 40 days of fasting. It is in commemoration of this that we observe the 40 days of Lent, our own preparation to follow Christ in His ministry and to His passion and death on the cross.

   Satan takes the opportunity, three times, to try to tempt Christ, weakened from fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. The Devil wanted to know in truth if Christ was really the Son of God (Sunday's Gospel - Matthew 4:1-11). Knowing He was hungry, Satan told Our Lord that He should turn stones into bread. In the second temptation, Satan took Him to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem and tried to have Him throw Himself off for "it is written" that He hath given His angels charge over Thee, and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone" (from Psalm 40. 11-12).  In the third temptation He took Christ to a mountain top and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. He promised them to Our Lord if He would fall down and adore him. Christ answered each temptation and said at last, "Begone Satan! for it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore and Him only shalt thou serve." After Satan left "...angels came and ministered to Him."

   Our pastor noted that twice in scripture did angels come to minister to Jesus personally. The first was in this instance. The second was in the Garden of Gethsemane where He sweat blood in the agony of His human nature, anticipating His ordeal to come the next day. It is thought that the angel in this latter case was Archangel Gabriel, who had been the messenger of the Annunciation of His coming. It seems fitting that he would be with our Lord at the beginning of His passion.

   The fact that Jesus faced temptation, and the types of temptation that we ourselves face, should make clear to us that the Devil tries to make us attach ourselves to material things as he tempted Christ to the glories of the world.

   In St. Paul's Epistle for the First Sunday of Lent (2 Corinthians 6: 1-10) we are told, "In an accepted time have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. (Paul quoted this from Isaias).Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation." We prepare ourselves by prayer, penance, charity, and meditating on God's word.

   We know from the liturgy of the day that we are in a battle, not just during Lent, but the whole of our lives, to fight Satan and to stay in the friendship of God.  Both the Offertory and Communion verse in the Mass for First Sunday of Lent is Psalm 4: 4-5. "the Lord will overshadow thee with His shoulders and under His wings thou shalt trust: His truth shall compass thee with a shield."  If we turn to God, He will hear us and protect us.

   Our Sunday Bulletin had  part of a sermon for Lent given by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who died in 397 A.D.  I will take just a bit here. "For true repentance is grief of heart and sorrow of soul because of the evils a man has committed. True repentance causes us to grieve over our offences, and to grieve over them with the firm intention of never committing them again.

   "And though every day a man lives may rightly be a day of repentance, yet is it in these days more becoming, more appropriate, to confess our sins, to fast, and to give alms to the poor; since in these days you may wash clean the sins of the whole year. Therefore I counsel all of you, and I exhort each one of you singly, to repair whatever you know within your soul is blameworthy. Whosoever among you discerns within himself what is unworthy in a Christian, let him correct it....."

   Since we are human, since we have temptations, and since we too often succumb to those temptations, not being sinless as Christ was sinless, this time of repentance gives us a chance to look at ourselves and "repair" our souls.