Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone." Jesus answered him, "Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test." Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me." At this, Jesus said to him, "Get away, Satan!
It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve."
Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.
- Matthew 6:24-34
This Sunday’s Gospel presents the familiar story of the Jesus’s temptation in the desert. Prior to His public ministry, Jesus goes out into the desert to fast and pray for forty days. He is preparing himself for the task ahead of him. This is what we are called to do during Lent. The Church gives us forty days to pray and reflect on our lives. And just like Jesus, we are to use this time to prepare ourselves for our task ahead: spreading the Good News of the Gospel. And yet a period of fasting and prayer is not enough.
We believe that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. Just like us, He faced temptation, and it was in the desert, when He was most vulnerable, that He faced His biggest temptations. The same is true for each of us. Temptation is something we all face every day. It is one of the most human experiences you can have. And it is often when we are at our lowest points that we face our biggest temptations. It is at these moments when we must imitate Jesus in the desert and make a choice.
The question is not whether we will face temptations, but how we will respond to them. Will we turn to God for strength and resist or will we give into the temptation and sin? This is the challenge at the core of our life as Christians. The Christian life is made up of a series of choices. We must constantly be choosing to follow Christ and do the will of God. It is in these small choices each day that we build up the habit of being a follower of Christ. As with all habits, the more we practice them the easier they become. This Lent, remember that each with each choice you make, you are taking one step closer to God.