Friends, we commence the holy and wonderful season of Lent, the time of preparation for Easter. I always think of Lent as something like spring training for baseball players, or like the end of the summer workouts for football players. It’s a time to get back to spiritual basics, to reacquaint ourselves with the elemental things in the spiritual life that we might get ourselves ordered to Christ. So the Church, in our first reading from Genesis, brings us back to the beginning.
Daily Reading
First Reading
Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.
Psalm
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Second Reading
Romans 5:12-19 or 5:12, 17-19
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Gospel Reading
Matthew 5:17-37
Friends, today’s Gospel tells of the Lord’s temptation in the desert. After forty days of fasting in the desert (evocative of Israel’s forty years of wandering in the desert), Jesus meets the devil, who proceeds to lure the Messiah onto the path of sin. Jesus’s sacrifice will entail his coming to battle sin at close quarters, his willingness, therefore, to be drawn by its power, to come under its sway.
Satan first tempts him with sensual pleasure: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” One of the most elemental forms of spiritual dysfunction is to make the satisfaction of sensual desire the center of one’s life. Jesus responds: “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
Jesus enters, through psychological and spiritual identification, into the condition of the person lured by this sin, but then he manages to withstand the temptation and in fact to twist this perversion back to rectitude.
Bible References
- Matthew 4:1-11