Our Interior Life
The First Sunday in LENT
1 March, AD 2009
TEXT: St. Matthew 4:1-11
In The Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
“Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.” (St. Matthew 4:10-11)
We learn from Sister Helen Julian, an Anglican nun of the Community of St. Francis that the Lenten Season is more than just a time of self-denial or a time for beating oneself up, spiritually. Self-denial on many levels can be beneficial during Lent, but it is not an end in and of itself. Instead, she proposes that Lent is time to really come into touch with one’s interior life; a return to spirituality which includes alms-giving and self-denial, but also an increase in one’s prayer life, a systematized reading of Holy Scripture, and, most importantly, a conscious attempt at reaching out and helping others in whatever kind or type of need that may present itself. In this way Lent is transformed from a time of doing without into a period of increased awareness of and activity in our interior, spiritual being. With that said, anytime we concentrate and work to better ourselves, especially spiritually, we come into contact with distractions or temptations which try to dissuade us from that activity. The same was true with Our Lord.
He had just completed a forty day period of fasting out in the wilderness as He came to grasps with His own identity as Son of God and Son of Man and the method by which He was going to fulfill His Father’s Will for the Salvation of mankind. The Scriptures tell us he was hungry and tired from the expenses of that physical and spiritual energy. Right on cue Satan enters and begins to tempt Him. Whether this was a physical manifestation or not, we don’t know. What we do know is that our Lord’s temptations or times of testing serve as a model for all of us when we, too, find ourselves in a time of trial or temptation.
Let it be said from the outset that that temptation or testing in and of itself is not sinful. It is our reaction to that temptation which determines whether our actions are sinful or not. We sin when we give-in to whatever temptation or testing that befalls us. What’s more, what we learn from Our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness is that ultimately, temptation is not to make us sin, but is, rather, an opportunity to overcome sin. It is not meant to weaken us, but make us stronger. Testing and trials help us to emerge finer, stronger, and purer from the ordeal, much like the silver or gold which emerges from the refiner’s fire, which has had its dross burned away, reveals a purer, more desirable precious metal that is better suited to be used in the metal smith’s craft. In this sense, temptations can be seen as blessings rather than curses because they make us more useful to God when we overcome them. It all depends upon how we react to them!
The three temptations of Our Lord show us on what three levels of our personality and spirituality we are likely, always, to be tested. The first temptation dealt with physical hunger when Satan tempted Jesus to turn the stones around Him into bread. Jesus reminded Satan that man shall not live by bread alone and cites Deuteronomy 8:3 which reads in part, “ . . . but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” Jesus points to our interior life by reminding us that, yes, our physical bodies are important and we do need food, but our being lies in our soul and our relationship with God. Secondly, when that temptation didn’t work, Satan ups the antie and tempts Jesus with well-being or prosperity; some call it sensationalism, when he takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the Temple and tries to get Him to jump, and even quotes Scripture to Him saying, from Psalm 91, that God has given His Angels charge over Jesus so that if He were to jump, He would not be hurt. There’s an old saying that even the Devil can quote Scripture and this is where it comes from. Jesus responds, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” as taken from Deuteronomy 6:16 which adds, “ . . . as ye tempted Him at Massah.”, which is a reference all the way back to Exodus when the Children of Israel tempted the Lord for water in the wilderness. Finally, Satan goes for broke when He takes Jesus up to a high mountain and shows Him all the Kingdoms of the earth and promises them to Him if He would only bow down to Satan and worship Him. This is the most insidious of all three temptations. Satan wants to replace God at the very heart of Jesus’ interior life; to cut off that relationship with God and replace it with at best, an idol, and at worse, evil, itself. Jesus again quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 which reads in part, “ . . . Fear the LORD GOD, serve Him, and swear by His Name.”, which Jesus recites as, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” And with that Satan left Him, for now.
It is true that we are tempted when we, like Jesus, are the most tired, weak, and most vulnerable, but never forget that we are also tempted in our strengths and prosperity as well. It doesn’t matter so much about our physical state as it does our spiritual state – the condition of our interior life. We must guard at all times against testings and temptations. Lent provides us with an opportunity to strengthen our defenses against times of trial. So we might choose to fast – reduce the intake of our physical sustenance so that we could hone our spiritual hunger for God. And then satisfy that hunger by systematized Bible reading so that when well-meaning friends or business associates try to talk us into doing something that we know is wrong, we would have the strength not to follow them in their course of destruction. Finally, by having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and strengthening it during Lent, we can keep sin at bay by not letting it distort our perspective in thinking that we could at all compromise with sin, thereby removing Jesus Christ from the throne of our lives. That’s the key to all of this. Over physical needs, over psychological needs – we know to keep Jesus Christ in our heart in the middle of our interior or spiritual life and to trust the promises of God to give us what we need so that in the long run we can emerge victorious over temptations and testings and having overcome them can be the people that God can use. It is a journey and a process that we are called to yearly – the final results of which will only be realized when we see God face to face. Don’t let real need and possible doubt create an inappropriate desire or action in your life. Learn from our Lord’s temptations so that we may overcome our own!
And now, unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost be ascribed all might, majesty, power, and dominion as is most justly due this day both now and forever; world without end. Amen.
SOLI DEO GLORIA – JEU+