FIRST SUNDAY OF LENT

“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”

Mt. 4, 1-11

Rev. Alexander Díaz

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, last Wednesday we started the wonderful, spiritual journey, similar to a great retreat which will last for forty days, in which we will stop to look and meditate about our fragile human reality, which weight us down and at times gets very difficult, since we are trying to follow the Gospel.

But this “human condition” fill us with temptations that makes this journey more difficult. Today’s Gospel talks to us about Jesus’ temptations in the dessert, a mystery that invites us to think that if He, being God, was not exempt from these temptations, we will not be either.

The Liturgy tells us that the Spirit took Jesus to the dessert, it is known by all of us that Israel, the place where Jesus was born and grew up is planted almost in the dessert, and I ask myself: ¿What sense does this leading makes, to a place where silence and death reside? Let us meditate a title bit on the meaning of “the dessert”.

The dessert is a place of silence, of loneliness, is getting away from all our daily activities, away from the noise and the superficialities. The dessert is an absolute place, a place of liberty, it places man in front of the fundamental things of his life.

In this sense, is a place of grace. By emptying himself of all worries, man finds his Creator. For this reason, to begin Lent, we are call to meditate on the steps Jesus took in order to begin His public life.

If we want to find answers to our own questions, we should keep quiet; we should go to the dessert and allow Him to talk to our hearts. The human being is always afraid of being alone, afraid of questioning himself, we are so use to the noise, to the hustle and bustle around us, so used to having others talk to us, but not do it on our own, for ourselves. The big things always begin in the dessert, in silence, in poverty.

We cannot participate in Jesus mission, in the mission of the Gospel, if we don’t go thru the experience of the dessert, without living its poverty, its hunger. The blessed hunger for justice, the one the Lord talks to us about in the Sermon of the Mount, could not be born, if the man is fed up with everything else.

But I want to make one thing very clear; Jesus’ dessert was not finished on these forty days. His last dessert, His extreme dessert, is when He experienced the loneliness in the agony of the Cross.

When everything seemed to be lost, when everything is dark and gloomy. And His mouth pronounced the words of Psalm 21: “My God, my god, why have you abandoned me”. In our lives, in order to conquer heaven, we will have to confront a lot desserts and storms, where we will also feel the same things that Jesus felt, we will be afraid, we will be sadden, we will feel affliction and pain.

We won’t be able to see clearly, everything will turn dark, there will be no way out, but when it is over, we have to understand that this is not the end, it is only a test, it is only another temptation we have to overcome without any problem.

When we enter the dessert, Jesus also enters the history of salvation of His people, Jesus enters this history in the temptations with His people. Jesus goes to the dessert to be tempted, He wants to participate in the temptations with His people and the world. He wants to carry our misery, defeat the enemy and open for us a path that will take us to the Promise Land.

After the experience in the dessert, Jesus goes into His life of ministry, His mission, preaching, healing, teaching, reconciling and relieving all suffering. With our own experience, we also confront temptation, we also carry out our mission of preaching, healing, teaching, reconciling and relieving all suffering in the world.

Finally, temptation is not a reality that we need to run away from, on the contrary, it is a reality that offers us a new opportunity to grow in our identity. If we are able, with God’s mercy, to be created in the image of Christ, regardless of the temptations, but in direct proportion of our strength of spirit against the lies that always accompany temptations.

Jesus took to the dessert with Him only His faith, His hope and His love. That was enough to fight any temptation used against Him and His power in a proud manner. Inside of our hearts and souls we have desires for God that need fresh air that need to be expressed.

In this new time of Lent we take the chance to face our desires of justice and reconciliation. The desire to relieve the suffering of our temptations. At any given time, when we have to face a confrontation, we know for sure that God is on our side.

That in this wonderful time of Lent, we too, become new men and women able to confront the reality of our lives and change something of ourselves. That the preaching of this Sunday’s gospel help us to change our attitude as we face the temptations that cross our paths.

Amen!!