My dear sisters and brothers in the Lord,
As we do each first Sunday in Lent, the church asks us to meditate upon that event in the Lord’s life.
When in the midst of the desert He was visited by the Father of Evil and tempted, having already been baptized in the Jordan for our sake. And before He began His public ministry, Jesus entered into the solitude of the desert to pray. And there the Father of Evil did his best. From the gospel of Matthew and Luke, we know that there were three temptations the Lord had. But interestingly, today in the gospel of Mark, Mark does not list the three temptations. He simply says Jesus was tempted.
And it’s curious. One could say, well, didn’t St. Mark think it was important? And of course, he certainly would have. But I think he’s trying to teach us a lesson, a lesson that you and I need to apply in our own lives. Because, my friends, whether we talk about the temptation the Lord endured for power, authority or possession, they all have the same root. They have one temptation that underlies them all. The temptation was this, that the Father of Evil tempted the Lord in his Humanity not to do what the Father asked, to create a wedge between the Lord and His Father, to take Him away from His mission, ultimately to deny who He was and why He came into the world in the first place.
And Jesus resisted precisely because there was no greater desire in His heart than to be faithful to His Father. There was no more burning passion in the heart, the sacred heart of the Lord, than to do what His Father asked and to love Him to the end, regardless of what the cost would be. The Lord’s heart was singular, pure, single, focused, and Satan left defeated.
You may ask, well, then, bishop, what’s the lesson for you and I? The lesson, my friends, rests in this simple fact, that temptation, when it comes in your life and mine, most often finds its root in the desires of your heart and mine. For unlike Jesus, our hearts are divided. Our desires at times are not ordered to the good. We want to do the good, but we’re attracted to do something else, which perhaps is not good, or even worse, is sinful. Part of our lives want to be faithful to God, and part of us want to be aligned to allegiance with something else. Our hearts are not always singular. They are divided. And in that crack is where the Father of Evil makes his home. And so it seems to me that in this first week in lent, you and I have spiritual homework. And it begins by asking the question for these next six days, ask it every day.
What is it that I truly desire in my heart? What is it that you and I truly want? To be honest. Brutally honest. And by being brutally honest, we can begin to diagnose why at times we fall prey to temptation and why we do the things we know are wrong. But we do them anyway, in part because we want to do them because we desire what they supposedly will give us. Pleasure, power, privilege, authority, whatever it may be. I cannot answer that question for you, but I am obliged to answer it for myself. For to overcome temptation in life, my friends, is a lifetime journey.
Allow me to offer three steps where you and I can perhaps get the better of the Father of Evil when he comes knocking on the door of our hearts. Step number one is exactly what I said, is to be honest with the desires that we have to face them in the honesty of our hearts. Because if we cannot name them, if we’re not honest with ourselves, then they will always wreak havoc. And once we have understood at this point what it is I want, or tomorrow what I want, or later today, what my heart is desiring, then step number two, my friends, is never put ourselves in the occasion where the temptation will grow.
A person who is addicted will not find a place of welcome in a bar or a drug den. They need to be away from all that tempts them. The same is true for you and me. If we’re tempted to lust, then be custodians of our eyes, what are we looking at and why are we looking at it? If we are tempted to possessions, then why is it that we continue to go online, on tv, in the stores and continue to buy and put ourselves in the position to continue to buy when we know we don’t need anymore? You see, my friends, step number two is avoid the occasions of sin, occasions when we are tempted.
And then step number three, my friends, is the hardest of all. When you and I are standing before the Father of Evil and he is whispering in your heart, do it. Go there. What difference does it make? You really want it, don’t you? You and I can never make the mistake that we can overcome that temptation alone, but dwells within us the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, of the one true God. And in those moments of temptations, I beg you, my friends, as I do in my own life, to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to say no. For left to ourselves, more than likely, we will stumble and say yes. But armed with His power, we can and will say no.
And the Father of Evil will go away defeated.
My friends, in the life of faith, temptation will come. It came to the Lord. It will come to us. Let us guard the doors of our hearts so that the Lord will be victorious and the Father of Evil will leave defeated.
