First Sunday in Lent (A) 9 March 2014

First Sunday in Lent (A) 9 March 2014

Matthew 4: 1-11

Our Big Temptation

José Antonio Pagola

   The scene of “the temptations of Jesus” is not a story we have to interpret lightly. The temptations described for us are not  properly speaking of the moral order. The story warns us that we can ruin our lives if we stray from the path Jesus follows.

   The first temptation is of decisive importance, for it can radically pervert and corrupt our lives. Apparently Jesus is offered something quiet harmless and good: put God at the service of his hunger. “If you are the Son of God, order these stones to become bread.”

   However, Jesus reacts swiftly to our surprise: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” He will not treat his own bread as an absolute necessity. He will not put God at the service of his own interests, forgetting the project of the Father. He will always seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice. At all times he will listen to His Word.

   Our needs are not satisfied by only assuring our bread. The human being needs and longs for much more. Even to the extent of rescuing from hunger and misery those who have no bread, we have to listen to God, our Father, and awaken in our consciences the hunger for justice, compassion and solidarity.

   Our great temptation today is to change everything into bread. To increasingly reduce the horizon of our lives to the mere satisfaction of our desires; to make the obsession for an ever greater well-being and indiscriminate and limitless consumerism the almost only ideal of our lives.

   We deceive ourselves if we think that this is the way to progress and liberation. Aren’t we seeing that a society that drags people to limitless consumerism and to self satisfaction, only leads to emptiness and meaninglessness in people and egoism, lack of solidarity and responsibility in society?

   Why do we feel bad when we see the number of people daily commit suicide increase tragically? Why do we continue to enclose ourselves in our false well being, raising increasingly inhuman  barriers so that the hungry do not enter our countries, do not reach our homes or knock at our doors.

   The call of Jesus can help us to become more aware that man does not survive only on  well being. The human being needs to foster the spirit, to  know love and friendship, to develop solidarity with those who suffer, to listen  with responsibility to their consciences, to open themselves to the ultimate mystery of life with hope.