First Sunday of Lent – A

      Jesus came as our substitute to please our heavenly Father. Since we cannot please the Father with perfect lives, Jesus came to do that in our place.

      Jesus is our Savior, not only by dying on the cross for us and our sins, but also by living a perfect life in our stead. This is especially true when it comes to temptations. In today’s Gospel reading, we see Jesus, our substitute, doing what we could never do: he perfectly resisted temptation and defeated the devil, and he did that for us. This is the beginning of his victory over Satan which eventually culminates in his victory on the cross and the empty tomb.

     We also get some good “tips” on how to fight temptation. We learn that we have to rely on the word of God. If we rely only on our own logic or our feelings or on what the rest of the world approves and does, we would fall into temptation and sin. We learn from today’s Gospel reading that we resist temptation by relying on God’s word and teaching.

      For there to be any hope for the salvation of the human race, someone had to perfectly defeat temptation and the wiles of the evil one. From the first humans, no one has ever successfully resisted all temptations in life. We have all somehow fallen short. Someone needed to come and to face the devil and defeat temptation and the devil for us. And that is what Jesus did.

      Jesus was weak with hunger after his fast and prayer of forty days in the desert. Appealing to his power as the Son of God, the devil tempts him to turn stone into bread: Jesus rebuts him from Scripture, “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

        The devil tempts him to be the spectacular miracle­ worker, jumping from the Temple heights. Jesus repels him, “Be off, Satan! Scripture says: worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.”

     There are four ways that we fight the temptations of Satan in our Christian lives:

• Prayer:  When we have an active prayer life the resistance to giving in to temptations is much stronger in our lives, and we focus our attention and desires toward what we believe God is asking of us, and then we grow closer in our relationship to God.

• Almsgiving:  When we focus our attention on others, then our focus is on doing good and removing our attention away from ourselves, which can lead to temptation. This also reminds us that there are less fortunate in the world, and helps us grown closer to those who have needs that we don’t have.

• Fasting:  When we sacrifice for the good of our Spiritual lives or the good of the Church Universal, we grow closer in the Body of Christ with all of our brothers and sisters; bringing to a closer reality the building up of the Kingdom of God.

• Reconciliation:  Move into the practice of going to Confession more frequently.  The Church requests that we make a Confession once during the Advent Season and again sometime between Ash Wednesday and Pentecost.  Celebrating the Sacrament more frequently is a good way to fight the temptations of the Devil and grow closer to Christ and our brothers and sisters.

  My brothers and sisters, if we fall into temptation and wish to recover, we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus had stood in our place and has defeated the devil, and that will give us strength and courage, and the resistance will be that much stronger.

We are early on in the season of Lent. Let us grow closer to our loving God and to one another.