Fr Jack SJ MD: Temptation Eyes: Homily for the 1st Sunday of Lent 6 March 2022

Lk 4:1-13

“Come let us worship the Lord

who for our sake endured temptation and suffering.”

Every morning during Lent the liturgy of the hours begins with this antiphon: It reminds us that Jesus was like us in all things but sin. He knew hunger and thirst, grief, sorrow, and profound fatigue. He knew temptation and suffering. Temptation and suffering are part of what it means to be human, they are part of the human condition. Were our lives free of temptation and suffering we would be incapable of experiencing joy.

The use of tempted in Luke's gospel presents a challenge for English-speakers. Many automatically define temptation as negative, illicit, and synonymous with sin. But, the Latin, Hebrew, and Greek roots of the word translated as temptation are neutral. Those roots include “trying,” “testing,” or “proving.” Indeed, some versions of the Our Father pray 'do not put us to the test' rather than the more familiar, 'lead us not into temptation.'

Unlike Adam, Jesus, the New Adam, was obedient to the Father in all things, even to accepting death on the cross. Satan offered those temptations when Jesus was hungry from fasting, tired from prayer, and disoriented by the harshness of the desert.

The Evil One tests us when we are in a similar states of hunger, fatigue and confusion. We are tested when disoriented by the unfamiliar geography of the personal deserts in which we find ourselves: newly widowed, diagnosed with a disease that will end in death, the confusion when abandoned by others. We confront these temptations when we are dissatisfied with the status quo, when we are frightened or angry, when preoccupied or overwhelmed with things of the world.

The challenge to create bread from stones was not simply to relieve hunger. It was the temptation to arrogant self-sufficiency, and illusory freedom, the temptation of taking care of oneself to the exclusion of all else. That temptation to radical self-sufficiency looms large in our lives in ways that are unique to each of us.

Putting God to the test is one of humankind's all-time favorites. God is not a divine puppet master who pulls our strings so as to make us dance. Nor is he a marionette we can control. God does not "cause" things to happen for the entertainment value of watching us struggle. And yet we ask . . .

"Why did God give me cancer?"

"Why is God allowing the war in Ukraine?"

"Why did God take my child?"

"Why? Why? Why?"

We cannot control God with strings made of prayer. “If my prayer isn't answered in the way I demand, I am through with God.” Those understandings of God are appropriate only to a child. How often do we test God in this way? How often do we demand that God answer our prayers in very specific ways, according to highly detailed scripts of which we hold the only copy?

Dostoevsky wrote in 'The Grand Inquisitor' section of The Brothers Karamazov: “. . . man seeks not so much God as the miraculous. And as man cannot bear to be without the miraculous, he will create new miracles of his own for himself and will worship deeds of sorcery and witchcraft.” The late Jesuit Father Stanley Marrow, accurately observed that, '. . . our appetite for signs is insatiable. We are forever testing to see if God is still there, to check whether our prayers are getting through.'

The Faustian bargain, “Sell your soul." I will give you great power.” was the final temptation. Power. Prestige. Money. Control. Being a celebrity. These idols have replaced God in many lives. The lust for power drives both major political parties in this country and most of the world. The false idols of power and prestige, money and control have contributed to diminishing the quality of our lives in many dimensions. Today as we watch a megalomaniac's desire for power playing out in Ukraine, many of us pray that Taiwan is not the next country in line for a violent power grab by a country that refuses to recognize Taiwan's sovereignty.

Despite the attractive temptations offered him, Jesus freely chose to obey the will of God the Father. In so doing, he made it possible for us to imitate Him in our own exercise of freedom and free will, the gifts that, along with speech, set humans far above all lower animals at a distance that will never be lessened.

Freedom is a wildly misunderstood concept. It is not a release from restrictions, rules, or responsibility, freedom as frequently understood by a college student away from home for the first time. Freedom is notthe opportunity to choose anything whatsoever, whenever, to make those choices without consequence or criticism. Dogs and monkeys do that because low animals have no free will and, as they are driven by instincts they bear no responsibility for their actions. Freedom is not the ability to adopt individual or idiosyncratic attitudes toward life or morality. Human freedom is not the right to decide who shall live and who shall die, at the beginning of life, the end of life, and anywhere in between. Rather than being freedom from, human freedom is freedom for. It allows us confront the temptations the evil one, the world, throws in our way. Free will allows us to say yes or no. It allows us to decide for or against ourselves. It allows us to maintain our integrity. Only humankind can decide for or against God in freedom. Only we have sufficient understanding to choose to reject sin.

When describing her adolescence, St. Edith Stein wrote: "I consciously and deliberately stopped praying so as to rely exclusively on myself; so as to make all decisions about my life in freedom." Years later, now a Carmelite nun, she described how she had been released from the self-imposed shackles of atheistic pseudo-freedom to find radical freedom in the science and shadow of the cross.

“Come let us worship the Lord

who for our sake endured temptation and suffering.”

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The photos below are from Slovenia in 2016. As I transfer photos from a few slunky USBdrives to a muk h smaller and faster solid state drive I am revisiting memories, reprocessing, and so on. All of the shots were taken within a 1/2 mile radius.