Liturgical Colour : Purple/Violet

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, this Sunday is the very first Sunday of the season of Lent, in which we are reminded of the need for us to be careful in living our lives so that we do not allow ourselves to be swayed by the temptations that are ever always present around us, all the wickedness and evils that may lead us astray in the journey towards God. As we continue to progress through this time and season of Lent, we need to remind ourselves of the many challenges and trials that we may have to endure and encounter in our path so that we will not be easily distracted and lose our focus in the Lord. We have to keep in mind that the Lord wants us all to be holy like Him, and to be worthy of Him, and this is why during this season and time of Lent, we seek to purify ourselves and rid ourselves of all the corruptions of sin.

In our first reading this Sunday, taken from the Book of Deuteronomy, we heard of the words of Moses, the leader of the Israelites, who exhorted the people of God on how they ought to offer their sacrifices and present them before the Lord. In that passage, we heard how the priest offering the sacrifice recounted the great deeds that the Lord had done for the people and for their ancestors, guiding them all through the various trials and tribulations in life, and how He has moved His hands to guide them all, performing great deeds, signs and wonders in their midst, freeing them from all of their enemies and from those who have persecuted them, as evidenced in the great signs of the time of the Exodus from Egypt.

Essentially, through those words of the priests, the people were constantly being reminded of the great and wonderful graces that they have all received from God, all the love that God has constantly shown to them. This is a reminder of the great love of God, the enduring love that had transcended even the rebelliousness and the sins of the people, who have often disobeyed and rebelled against Him. He did not forget those whom He loved when they called upon Him, and He came to their help and gave them all His blessings, and bringing them to the Land of Promise, fulfilling the Covenant which He had made with their forefathers, with Abraham and his descendants. And therefore, it is also a reminder for all of us that if we sincerely seek God’s mercy and love, we shall be forgiven by Him, and we shall once again be found in His loving embrace and Presence.

Then, in the second reading taken from the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to the Church and the faithful people of God in Rome, we heard of the salvation which God had reassured all of us, His faithful ones, by the sure guarantee that He has given to all of us through His Son, Whom He had sent into our world to be our Saviour, so that everyone who believes in Him, all of us may receive through Him the sure path towards the eternal life and true happiness that can be found in God alone. And everyone, regardless of their background and origin, be it they are Jews or Greeks, or any other differences or categories that we often differentiate ourselves by, all of us are truly beloved by God, and God will bless and grant us His salvation if we are to put our trust and faith in Him.

This is yet again another reminder of the universal nature of God’s love, which is given freely to everyone without bias or preference. Everyone is equally beloved by God, be it those who are rich or poor, privileged or nobody, powerful or weak, healthy or sick, man or woman, and no artificial human divisions or groupings, prejudices and biases affect His love for all of us, love that He has genuinely shown us from the very beginning of time. God Who created us all out of love wants us all to be reconciled to Him, to be guided back to Him through our repentance and sincere desire for purification of our souls, for the atonement of our faults and mistakes, which He had accomplished once and for all, for all time and for all creation through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, Who has triumphed and conquered sin and death.

And in the Gospel passage this Sunday, we heard that famous moment when the same Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God Incarnate, was tempted by the Devil in the desert for the forty days period after His baptism at the Jordan. This baptism was the mark of the beginning of the Lord’s ministry, the time when He started to do everything that His heavenly Father, our loving God and Father, has entrusted to Him, for the sake of our salvation. But in order to do that, He Who also share in our humanity, and born into this world, also has to subject Himself to the same temptations that the Devil has brought upon our ancestors, by which he had led countless souls into the path of sin and damnation. Why is that so? That is because, by uniting Himself to our humanity, and by embracing our human nature, Christ our Lord showed us all that it is possible for us to defeat sin and reject the temptations to sin, by obeying God perfectly and wholeheartedly in our lives.

Now, let us all look at the three temptations that the Devil presented to the Lord. The first temptation was the temptation of hunger and food, in which the Devil told the Lord to turn the stones there in the desert into bread for Him to take and eat, because He was very hungry after having fasted in the desert for forty days. Clearly the Lord was capable of such a deed, but He rebuked Satan, telling him that ‘man does not live on bread alone, but on every words that come from the mouth of the Lord’. Essentially this is a reminder for all of us not to give in to the temptations of our flesh, our desires for things of this world, be it for food and other luxuries around us, or for the other goods and pleasurable things in this life. It is not that we cannot or should not eat, as certainly we need to eat to sustain ourselves, but we must not allow ourselves to be overcome by the attachment and desires we have for those things that we end up neglecting the Lord and His truth and words.

It is also an important reminder that we should not orientate our lives around the material things in this world, which is what the second temptation that the Lord was given by the Devil, who brought Him up a very tall mountain, showing Him all the glory and riches of the world, all the kingdoms and the glory of all those things. The Lord told the Devil off when he said to Him that everything would be His if only He would worship the Devil. The Lord rebuked the Devil saying that the Lord God alone is worthy of worship, and nothing or noone else do. This is an important reminder for all of us because many of us may truly realise that we may have idolised or turned into an idol our obsession and desire for worldly glory, wealth, possessions and all the other things that we usually desire for in our lives, such as praise, renown, money, material goods, pleasures of the flesh, and many more.

That is why during this time and season of Lent, we practice fasting and abstinence to remind us all of the need to restrain these desires which we may have in us so that we do not end up being swayed and led down the path of sin. We have to make the conscious effort to keep ourselves free from the unhealthy attachments to worldly matters, and fasting and abstinence, done with the right spirit and desire to keep ourselves focused on the Lord will help us in our journey towards the Lord, particularly during this time of Lent. We also should deepen our relationship with God, and remind ourselves to spend more and more time during this season in particular, so that if we have not really spent the time with Him all these while, we should change our way of life, and begin to spend more time with God, good quality time through prayer and other means.

Lastly, the third and final temptation that the Lord Jesus faced from the Devil is the greatest temptation of all, that is pride. This happened as the Devil brought Him up to the parapet or the peak of the Temple of Jerusalem, asking Him to drop down from there, even quoting from the Scriptures that ‘The Lord would not let His Holy One to be hurt, and would send His Angels to protect Him’. This was meant to test the Lord with pride, as doing such an action in the view of so many people present at the Temple and miraculously surviving such an action, would make the Lord praised and glorified by the people, and everyone certainly would have believed in Him with such a wonderful miracle. But the Lord rebuked Satan again, telling him that no one should test the Lord, and He refused to be tempted by pride.

Pride is certainly something that the Devil was very familiar with. After all, it was pride that brought him to his downfall, he who was the greatest and most brilliant of all the Angels of God, Lucifer, the lightbearer. His great brilliance and might made him to grow proud and to think that he can ascend above God, aspiring to take over the Throne of Heaven. And thus that was how Lucifer fell from power and grace, becoming the Devil, the great Enemy of all the people of God. He used this same temptation of pride to tempt us mankind, to lead us astray from the path towards God by causing us to indulge in our pride, ego, ambition and desires, so that we end up following his path of rebellion and disobedience, turning us into the followers of the Devil instead of the faithful disciples and holy people of God.

Therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ, after we have heard all these words from the Sacred Scriptures, and hopefully after carefully discerning together our path in life, we may come to realisation that sin and the temptations to sin are serious obstacles preventing us from coming back to God, our loving Father and Creator. Each and every one of us should make good use of the time and opportunities which the Lord Himself has provided to us so that by our sincere efforts in seeking Him and His forgiveness, God may be kind to show us His love, His compassion and mercy, allowing us to be fully and truly reconciled and reunited with Him. We should humble ourselves and resist the temptations of pride, ambition, ego, desires and all the attachments to worldly pleasures, vices and all those distractions that can keep us away from God.

May the Lord continue to guide us throughout this Lenten journey, so that our observances of Lent, our practices such as fasting, abstinence, prayer and almsgiving, among others, may truly benefit us and strengthen us all in our faith and in our relationship with the Lord, our most loving God, as we journey towards the pinnacle of the story of our salvation at Holy Week and Easter. May God continue to bless our efforts and good works in bringing ourselves ever closer to His loving embrace, so that we may one day be worthy to be at His Holy Presence, to share forever His eternal joy and glory, having been forgiven from our many sins and faults, and be reunited with our loving Father, to live forever in His Presence. Amen.