(Audio recorded live, 8 March 2025)

Readings:

Dt. 26:4-10; Ps. 91; Rom. 10:8-13; Lk. 4:1-13

Today, on this first Sunday of Lent, our readings emphasize the importance of right worship of Almighty God. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses commands the Israelites to observe the feast of First Fruits, bikkurim. Every year, the Israelites were commanded to offer a sheaf of the first grain they harvested. A sheaf was about a two or three foot high bundle of wheat, weighing about five pounds. This offering was important because God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and settled them in a land flowing with milk and honey. As the people say in the ritual: “Therefore, I have now brought you the firstfruits of the products of the soil which you, O LORD, have given me.” This is an example of right worship of God. The people acknowledge the good that God has done for them and respond by making a sacrifice.

Lent is a time for us to get right with God. Sometimes we can be distant from God. Now is a time to draw near. How has our worship been? What do we bring to this altar today? The ancient rituals helped the people to remember what God did for them. How often do we meditate on what Christ has done for us?

In today’s Gospel, we hear St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. St. Luke tells us that Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit, who led him into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil. What will Jesus do? How will he fair against his adversary? These questions are really secondary to what St. Luke is trying to show us, namely, that Jesus is the Son of God. Twice, the devil says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God…” change this stone into bread or throw yourself off the roof of the Temple. The devil wants Jesus to abuse his power or use his power for selfish reasons. Something that struck me while meditating on this passage was that Jesus would not change stone into bread because to Jesus even the stone has a certain dignity. The stone was part of Creation. It was being exactly what it was created to be: a stone. To change the stone into bread would mean to completely destroy it. Jesus did not come to destroy Creation, but to save it.

A few weeks ago, we heard the passage from St. John’s gospel when Jesus made water into wine. Jesus did not destroy the water to make the wine, rather, he used his Divine power to create what was needed to have the water become wine. We do well to meditate on these concepts of being and becoming. Just as a stone has being as a stone, so too do we have being, as humans. A stone has potential to become something, but only if something external acts upon it, as in the case of a sculptor. Its stoniness remains, but it becomes something else, namely, a sculpture. In like manner, a human being has potential to become something far greater than we could ask or imagine. As St. John says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2). Let us ponder that for just a moment. St. John is saying that we have the potential to become like God.

According to St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons and Father of the Church, “This is the glory of man: to persevere and remain in the service of God. For this reason the Lord told his disciples: You did not choose me but I chose you. He meant that his disciples did not glorify him by following him, but in following the Son of God they were glorified by him. As he said: I wish that where I am they also may be, that they may see my glory” (Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter 14).

How are we living up to our potential? Perhaps this is a question we may return to throughout the Season of Lent. It is a question that serves to aid us in our journey towards holiness; it is a question that forces us to look inward. But, a word of caution. When we examine ourselves in this way, we might not like what we see. As the Psalmist says, “Who may go up the mountain of the LORD? Who can stand in his holy place? ‘The clean of hand and pure of heart, who has not given his soul to useless things, what is vain’” (Ps. 24:3-4). The Holy Spirit exposes our sin. As the prophet Malachi says, “For he will be like a refiner’s fire, like fullers’ lye” (Mal. 3:2). But, let us not be discouraged by our shortcomings, for they are merely a means to our own growth in holiness. So let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us see ourselves as He sees us. And let us be transformed by His sanctifying grace.

The Lord may indeed reveal something that makes us uncomfortable, or makes us uneasy. Good. God did not create us to be stones. A stone does not think about right or wrong; it does not have a conscience. But, we do, and the Lord speaks to us every day, if only we will listen, which brings us back to the importance of right worship.

Again, Lent is a time a to get right with God. The devil questions if Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus says, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” We see how Jesus defeats the devil by quoting Scripture, but for Jesus this is not just a quote, he also meant it as a command. So, the devil departed from him. As St. James says, “So submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4:7).

We, the baptized, have the grace of God to aid us in our journey toward holiness. As St. Paul reminds us, “No one who believes in [Christ] will be put to shame.” So, let us keep our hearts and minds fixed intently on the Lord. He gives us the grace to overcome sin; He will be with us in distress; He will deliver us and glorify us. As we turn now to the Eucharist, the perfect sign of God in our midst, may the communion we share help us to put God first in our lives and to achieve our fullest potential as brothers and sisters of Christ, sons and daughters of the Most High God.