The First Sunday of Lent (2025)
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread”…
When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.
—Luke 4:1-4, 13
The gospels’ accounts of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness are among the most challenging narratives we have of Jesus’ life.
After all, if he was without sin, why was he even tempted?
Why was this experience of temptation so important at the beginning of his ministry?
Jésus tenté dans le désert by James Tissot (1886-1894)
The lesson offered by the temptations of Jesus is an invitation to do the work of Lent and to look at our own preferences for self-sufficiency, ambition, and comfort in the light of God’s mercy. And here, I think of the Catholic novelist, Graham Greene, who wrote in his novel Brighton Rock, “You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
Lent is the time when the Church pauses to reflect on the reality of that mercy. And, when weighed against human standards, God’s mercy is appallingly strange because it costs us so little: God asks only that we surrender to God’s love and mercy.
For most of us, this process of surrender is one which unfolds gradually over a lifetime of prayer, service, struggle, and even setbacks. However, the temptation to choose our own way and will over God’s is never far away.
That call to surrender to God’s mercy is at the core of the Christian life. And yet, at the same time, there is a struggle that takes place in every human heart: “Lent would indeed be a futile liturgical farce,” writes Edna Hong, “if the redeemed were henceforth sinless and if the tides of human nature were not always moving even the twice-born [the baptized], who have not shed their human nature, in the direction of complacency and taking it all for granted… As long as the conscience of the born-again are housed in human flesh and bone, they are prone to the sleep of death and need continual rescuing.”
Saint Luke’s account of the temptations of Jesus reminds us that the life of a disciple includes contending with the mysterious tug of evil, which is simultaneously repellent and attractive. Just as Jesus was, we are tempted to temporarily shift our focus—perhaps, just for a moment—from God’s promises in order to attend to our own wants or needs or priorities. When this happens, we risk losing our awareness of God’s presence and action in our lives, choosing to focus instead on more tangible realities, like food, possessions, pleasure, comfort, and reputation.
In the end, however, after being tempted to be self-sufficient and to use his power for his own glory, Jesus did not turn away from God—the Father’s will remained the priority of his life. The Trappist writer, Michael Casey, has reflected, “We have been called to follow the one who was tempted in the desert, and we must expect that fidelity to our life of discipleship will involve us in substantial and sometimes earth-shuddering struggles” (from Fully Human, Fully Divine: An Interactive Christology)
The Season of Lent reminds us that holiness is possible for us only when we enter into the desert—the place where we meet God—to struggle, understanding that whatever darkness we may encounter will not overtake us as long as we refuse to accept anything less than God’s love and mercy:
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved” (Romans 10:9-10).
Grant, almighty God,
through the yearly observances of holy Lent,
that we may grow in understanding
of the riches hidden in Christ
and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the First Sunday of Lent
