Three Temptations of Christ (detail)
Sandro Botticelli, 1481-82

Readings:
Deuteronomy 26:4-10
Psalms 91:1-2,10-15
Romans 10:8-13
Luke 4:1-13

Chants

In today’s epic Gospel scene, Jesus relives in His flesh the history of Israel.

We’ve already seen that like Israel, Jesus has passed through water, been called God’s beloved Son (see Luke 3:22; Exodus 4:22). Now, as Israel was tested for forty years in the wilderness, Jesus is led into the desert to be tested for forty days and nights (see Exodus 15:25).

He faces the temptations put to Israel: Hungry, He’s tempted to grumble against God for food (see Exodus 16:1-13). As Israel quarreled at Massah, He’s tempted to doubt God’s care (see Exodus 17:1-6). When the Devil asks His homage, He’s tempted to do what Israel did in creating the golden calf (see Exodus 32).

Jesus fights the Devil with the Word of God, three times quoting from Moses’ lecture about the lessons Israel was supposed to learn from its wilderness wanderings (see Deuteronomy 8:3; 6:16; 6:12-15).

Why do we read this story on the first Sunday of Lent? Because like the biblical sign of forty (see Genesis 7:12; Exodus 24:18; 34:28; 1 Kings 19:8; Jonah 3:4), the forty days of Lent are a time of trial and purification.

Lent is to teach us what we hear over and over in today’ss readings. “Call upon me, and I will answer,” the Lord promises in today’s Psalm. Paul promises the same thing in today’s Epistle (quoting Deuteronomy 30:14; Isaiah 28:16; Joel 2:32).

This was Israel’s experience, as Moses reminds his people in today’s First Reading: “We cried to the Lord...and He heard.” But each of us is tempted, as Israel was, to forget the great deeds He works in our lives, to neglect our birthright as His beloved sons and daughters.

Like the litany of remembrance Moses prescribes for Israel, we should see in the Mass a memorial of our salvation, and “bow down in His presence,” offering ourselves in thanksgiving for all He has given us.

______________

St. Ambrose
from Commentary on St. Luke, IV, 7-12

"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil"

You must recall how the first Adam was cast out of Paradise into the desert if you are to attend to the way in which the second Adam (1Cor 15,45) returns from the desert to paradise. Notice, then, how the first punishment was unloosed in just the same way as it had been knotted, and how the divine blessings were restored along the same lines as those that went before.

Adam emerges out of virgin earth, Christ comes forth from a Virgin; the former was made in God's image, the latter is God's Image itself (Col 1,15); the former was set above all irrational beasts, the latter above every living creature. Foolishness came through a woman, wisdom through a Virgin; death came from a tree, life from the cross. The one, being divested of spiritual clothing, wove a garment of leaves from a tree; the other, divested of this world's clothing, no longer sought material dress (Jn 19,23).

Adam was cast out into the desert; Christ comes forth from the desert, for he was fully cognizant of where he would find condemned man, whom he would lead back into paradise set free from his sins... For how, without a guide, could he who had lost his way in Paradise through lack of a guide, rediscover in the desert the road he had lost? Temptations are numerous there, the struggle for virtue is difficult and false moves into error are easy... So let us follow Christ, as it is written: "The Lord your God shall you follow, holding fast to him alone" (Dt 13,5)... Let us follow in his footsteps and we shall be able to return to paradise from the desert .