1st Sunday of Lent, Cycle A

The playwright, Oscar Wilde once wrote, “I can resist anything but temptation.”

Temptations certainly test our free will, but they don’t conquer it. Our free will remains intact, despite our sin.

Our first reading invites us to see the first temptation which gave the world the first (original) sin.

On the one hand, this story reminds us that we had failed to use our God-given free will for the good. On the other hand, despite Adam and Eve’s wrong action, we see that free will works. Free will, regardless of our actions (good or bad) gives us our identity as human beings. We aren’t robots. We are humans, made in God’s image; complete with free will.

The purpose of these readings today is to recognize our identity as human beings. Made in God’s image, we may freely will to love God who freely wills to be in communal love with us.

Saint Paul comments in his Letter to the Romans about the sin of Adam.

Adam’s free will to sin brought about his condemnation and the condemnation of the world. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam’s sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the “death of the soul”. (Catechism, 402).

Thankfully, as Paul also reminds us: “… just as through one transgretion condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, aquittal and live came to all.”

God, who wills to love us, gave to us his Son who – like us in all things but sin – wills to love our Father in heaven. Jesus’ greatest act of love – death on a cross – conquered Adam’s transgression and restored us to life with the Father. Only by God’s will to love us are we saved.

The Gospel of Matthew gives us three temptations that Jesus had to endure in the desert.

The First Temptation: “Command these stones to become bread.” Jesus rebukes Satan with the words, “One does not live on bread alone.”

Jesus will for God is more important than food for a day. As Catholics, we make a free will act of fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in solidarity with Jesus who is faithful to His Father in Heaven.

“The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.”

The Second Temptation: “Throw yourself down.” Jesus says,”You shall not put your God to the test.”

Jesus freely renounces such a test as a sign of his fidelity and communion with the Father. This Lent calls us to freely place our faith in God.

The Third Temptation: “All this I shall give to you, if you worship me.” Jesus replies, “The Lord your God shall you worship, and him alone shall you serve.”

Jesus freely wills to love God above all things; especially the enticements of this world. Lent calls us to freely abandon the trappings of this world and seek the things of heaven.

Rather than giving up something for Lent, the Church invites us to increase our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

• In what way will I increase my prayer life?
• In what way will I empty myself physically (through fasting and abstinence) to make room for God?
• In what way will I increase my life of charity?

Take, O Lord,
and receive my entire liberty,
my memory, my understanding
and my whole will.

All that I am and all that I possess
You have given me.

I surrender it all to You
to be disposed of according to Your will.

Give me only Your love and Your grace;
with these I will be rich enough,
and will desire nothing more.

For I acknowledge my offense,
and my sin is before me always:
“Against you only have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight.”