A Homily for the First Sunday of Lent

+ It is one of the more consoling aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation that Our Lord, in His human nature, himself suffered temptation—as the Gospel of this first Sunday of Lent recounts. That the devil tempts Our Lord when He is hungry and is perhaps, therefore, humanly speaking, weaker and more vulnerable, comes as little surprise: the devil chooses his moment carefully, as each of us knows only too well.

Our Lord’s humanity was, of course, not marked by the disastrous effects of Original Sin. But ours is. The weakness of our fallen human nature is far more severe than merely that of hunger. Original Sin and the concupiscence that remains even after its remission by the grace of Baptism almost give the devil a key with which to open the door, as it were. As St Paul himself complains in the letter to the Romans: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Rom. 7:19) Concupiscence—that weakness and tendency to give into temptation and to fall back into sin—is a reality with which we must each reckon. ‘Dancing with the devil’ can seem very attractive at times, even if we already know that it shall not end well.

Indeed, we might easily be forgiven for complaining that Our Lord’s strength in the face of temptation in this morning’s Gospel is all very well and good, but that His humanity is not scarred by Original sin as is ours. How could we be so strong? We would surely falter!

Such a protest is understandable, certainly—but it entirely misses the point. For the taking of human nature by Almighty God is the post-Fall re-revelation of our true human nature. God made man in Christ Jesus does not present us with some inspiring ‘superman’; no, it reveals to us, once again, the magnificence of God’s creation of man and woman in nothing less than His own image and likeness as the Book of Genesis (1:26-27) teaches us. The Incarnation reveals to us the truth about human nature, and about whom we are called to be.

Thus, the use by the Church’s Liturgy today of the temptations of Our Lord in the desert is not an occasion for distant admiration mixed with quiet despair. No; it is a call to that profound renewal of our human nature that is possible in Christ through Baptism and renewed through the frequent worthy reception of the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion. It is a call to take up the spiritual weapons at our disposal—most particularly those of prayer, fasting and almsgiving—and to regain where necessary the lost grace of Baptism or to fortify ourselves further against the inevitable attacks of the world, the flesh and the devil. It is a call to take up the fight anew, to persevere in its exigencies, indeed to perfect it so that the devil no longer has any opportunity and that the concupiscence against which we struggle may recede once and for all into the background.

“That would be wonderful, but it’s quite unlikely. I’ve tried so often before. So many Lents have made such little difference,” we may well respond, quite truthfully even—at least in respect of the past. But here we come face to face with the most insidious temptation of the devil, and it is literally vital that we recognise it as such, as a truly deadly temptation, and that we resist it with all our might. For no matter how slothful or seemingly ineffectual our previous efforts may have been, indeed no matter how sinful or far from God we may be or believe ourselves to be, the Incarnation is a reality that is more powerful than evil and its fruits—the redemption of fallen human nature; our redemption—are available to each of us if only we resolve to open ourselves to them and persevere in the working out of their realisation.

This, then, is the clarion call of Lent: to dismiss the demonic temptation to sloth and despair and to take up the arms of prayer, fasting and almsgiving anew, to make a good and complete confession of our sins and to be ready to receive Our Lord worthily in Holy Communion at Easter. Yes, we have heard this before. Yes, we have most probably tried this before. But our past feeble attempts do not ultimately matter.

What matters is that now, in this Lent, we resist the temptation to wallow in mediocrity and strive anew for perfection in Christ. What matters is that, with Church’s prayer each morning at Lauds, we beg: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and steadfast spirit within me,” (Ps. 50:10) and that we follow up this prayer with the practical steps of repentance, of making a good sacramental Confession, of doing penance and by actually avoiding future occasions of sin as necessary. What matters is that we replace vice with virtue, traditionally with real time given to prayer, to serious fasting and to acts of charity through almsgiving—something for which the traditional Ember days of this coming first week of Lent (i.e. Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) provide an excellent opportunity.

Temptation is no news—as the Gospel demonstrates even Our Lord endured temptation in His humanity. What is news—what is truly Good News, the evangelion—is that temptation can be resisted and that our true human nature and dignity can flourish as God intended it in the beginning: if only we will act now to turn to Him anew with the traditional Lenten means at our disposal. +