An Important Reminder for Lent

Gospel Reflection for February 17, 2024, the First Sunday of Lent - Mark 1:12-15

Thereupon, the Spirit sent him out into the desert: and in the desert he spent forty days and forty nights, tempted by the devil; there he lodged with the beasts, and there the angels ministered to him. But when John had been put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God’s kingdom: The appointed time has come, he said, and the kingdom of God is near at hand; repent, and believe the gospel. (Mark 1:12-15 Knox Translation)

The readings for this first Sunday of Lent focus on Jesus’s temptation in the desert by Satan for forty days and forty nights. This is appropriate, since the period of Lent prior to Holy Week was established in tradition specifically as an imitation of and participation in Christ’s great fast. Before our own death and entrance into eternal life, we are tested in this world, as was Job in the Old Covenant, to see if we will remain faithful to God, if our love for Him is truly divine or only a human affection susceptible to the cares of the world and the concupiscence of the flesh. Only if the divine life of charity has been firmly infused into our souls through the Sacraments and a life of virtue will we truly possess sanctifying grace and the gift of perseverance to endure all that this world throws at us and finally make it home to Christ in Heaven.

The Gospel for this Sunday also highlights an important reminder which I would like to discuss, something which we should keep in mind as we begin this Lenten season. Christ endured the hardest temptations any human being can ever face, and He did so not by just any demon, but by Satan himself. He felt all the temptations that humans have ever felt, experiencing them through His universal humanity as the Son of Man, and He did so amidst a total renunciation of the world, separated from the care and support of all His friends and loved ones and from any bodily comfort. His only protection against the seductions of the Devil was the grace of God.

Ultimately, this is true for us as well. We cannot resist the wiles of the Devil by our own power; he is an angelic being who is far beyond us in strength and intelligence. And, in many cases, he will tempt us when we are most exposed, in the midst of tragedy, loss or pain, separated from or even abandoned by those closest to us, like Our Lord after His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the love of God seems most remote, as it did to the world when Christ cried out on the Cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46) Satan hopes, as he did with Job, that, once all of our earthly reminders of God’s love, in family, comfort and contentment, are removed, then we will forget God as well; this is precisely why the so-called “problem of evil” is the most common reason for people forsaking their faith and falling away from the Church. Our Lord chose to be led into the wilderness of temptation for this very reason, to sanctify our trials and make them a means by which, through grace, we can grow in love of God.

Yet this is not always the case. We tend to think that, like Christ, we are always tempted directly by Satan and always on a one-to-one basis. However, Satan does not work alone: he has a whole legion of demonic minions working alongside him; he also has many human cooperators, those who, untrained by virtue to discern his temptations, willingly obey him and his minions. Together, demons coordinate to ruin those who are most trying to be holy. They will tempt others to say or do things which will make our pursuit of holiness more difficult, especially when we are most intentionally striving to live virtuously, as in Lent. We must be aware of this coordination and anticipate that, as we fast, pray and work to amend our lives this Lent, not only our own flesh and the demonic temptations within us but also many people in our lives will, knowingly or unknowingly, assist demons to tempt us even more. All of this should be a reminder to us and a reassurance that we are on the right track. As St. John Chrysostom explains,

Because all that Christ did and suffered was for our teaching, He began after His baptism to dwell in the wilderness, and fought against the devil, that every baptized person might patiently sustain greater temptations after His baptism, nor be troubled, as if this which happened to Him was contrary to His expectation, but might bear up against all things, and come off conqueror. For although God allows that we should be tempted for many other reasons, yet for this cause also He allows it, that we may know, that man when tempted is placed in a station of greater honour. For the Devil approaches not save where he has beheld one set in a place of greater honour. (Catena Aurea)

Many people who are enslaved to sin, whose intellects are darkened, obey the temptations of demons even while believing they are doing good, and some of these people even claim or believe they are Christians obeying the will of God. Others will even be generally good people but unwittingly act in a way that leads us into a near occasion of sin. We must beware of this and know that our struggles against the flesh will be made worse by people we meet in daily life, and that the temptations of the demonic coordinators will target what they have learned are our greatest weaknesses and vices, exacerbating precisely what we are trying to overcome.

But again, this should not surprise us: we should be prepared for it and let it remind us that we are moving ever closer to Christ. Just as the servants of Satan pursued Christ and the Holy Family throughout their lives, forcing them to flee into Egypt and finally “winning” in the Crucifixion, as they would the apostles and martyrs of the Church throughout history, so today people will pursue anyone who tries to live out the Gospel and conquer sin. Most of all, these people striving for holiness are a reminder to their tempters that it is possible to live rightly and to serve God, and they do not wish to see this mirror of shame held up to them; they want to “disprove” holiness and reassure themselves that it is not possible to be truly loving and selfless. We must show them otherwise, that by God’s grace we can attain authentic purity and joy even in this life.

Satan is the prince of this world (Jn 12:31) who, although defeated by Christ, still reigns in his shadow kingdom, trying by spite to drag all that he can “into that eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Mt 25:41) He will reward those who serve him and deprive those who resist, giving many the impression that their lives of wealth, fame and power are indicative of God’s favor or their personal righteousness. As always, one of the main goals of Satan and his followers, within the utter lack of creativity to which sin is confined, is to ruin anything good, to distort any reminder of God - including the corruption of the rainbow, the sign of God’s covenant with Noah, into the demonic flag of the LGBTQ movement. We must remember this whenever we try to sift through the products of the world in search of the kernels of redeeming value.

By His Lent, Christ shows us the truth of temptation and offers us the grace to remain faithful to Him no matter what the world, the flesh or the Devil might bring against us. May we remember this as we begin the holy penitential season of Lent in preparation for Easter.

But He retires into the desert that He may teach us that, leaving the allurements of the world, and the company of the wicked, we should in all things obey the Divine commands. He is left alone and tempted by the devil, that He might teach us, that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution; (2 Tim. 3:12) whence it follows, And he was in the wilderness forty days and forty nights, and was tempted of Satan. But He was tempted forty days and forty nights, that He might shew us, that as long as we live here and serve God, whether prosperity smile upon us, which is meant by the day, or adversity smite us, which agrees with the figure of night, at all times our adversary is at hand, who ceases not to trouble our way by temptations. (Bede, Catena Aurea)