📖 Homily This Sunday

My brothers and sisters, today we begin our Lenten journey. As we enter this sacred season, the Church places before us a powerful story—two stories, really—that illuminate the human condition and God's plan of salvation.

In the first reading from Genesis, we witness a moment that changed everything. God forms man from the dust of the earth and breathes into him the breath of life.

God breathes into us "the breath of life" and so we are living beings; the "breath" of God, ruah in Hebrew, is another name for His Spirit.

What a beautiful image! We are not accidents of nature. We are not merely biological organisms. We are creatures lovingly fashioned by God's own hands, animated by His very breath.

God places our first parents in paradise, surrounded by beauty and abundance.

Paradise contains two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, and the serpent, who is going to tempt the woman, later known as Eve, while they're in the garden.

But then comes the serpent.

The serpent is none other than Satan, the devil, appearing under the form of a serpent in Genesis 3.

Notice how the devil operates.

He makes God's commandment nice and blurry: "Did God really say…?" Then he gets them to doubt God's intentions.

The serpent doesn't begin with an outright denial of God's word. He begins with a question, planting seeds of doubt. "Did God really say...?" How often do we hear that same whisper in our own lives? "Did God really mean that? Is that teaching really necessary? Surely God doesn't expect that of me."

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

At the heart of sin is a failure to trust—a failure to believe that God's plan is better than our own, that His will leads to life while our self-will leads to death.

But the story doesn't end in the garden. Today's Gospel brings us into another garden, another wilderness—the desert where Jesus confronts the same ancient enemy. And here we see the beautiful symmetry of God's plan.

Christ, the New Adam, succeeds where the first Adam failed, demonstrating perfect obedience to the Father.

Consider the parallels. Adam and Eve were in paradise, surrounded by plenty, and they fell. Jesus is in the desert, hungry after forty days of fasting, and He stands firm.

Matthew's purpose in this story is to present Jesus as the faithful and obedient son of God, which contrasts with the disobedient son Israel in the Exodus story. Jesus is a model of obedience to God.

Notice how Jesus defeats the tempter. He doesn't engage in elaborate arguments. He doesn't try to out-debate the devil. Instead, He responds with Scripture: "One does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God." "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test." "The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve."

Jesus is the new Adam who remained faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation. Jesus fulfils Israel's vocation perfectly: in contrast to those who had once provoked God during forty years in the desert, Christ reveals himself as God's Servant, totally obedient to the divine will.

My friends, this is why we observe Lent.

By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.

We are not simply commemorating an event from two thousand years ago. We are entering into that same spiritual battle. We are joining Jesus in the desert to confront our own temptations, to recognize where we have failed to trust God, and to learn from Christ how to stand firm.

The temptations Jesus faced are not foreign to us. The first temptation—to turn stones into bread—is the temptation to use God's gifts for our own gratification, to reduce life to the satisfaction of physical appetites. How often do we fall into this trap? We live in a culture that constantly tells us: You deserve this. You need this. Satisfy yourself. But Jesus reminds us that we are made for more than mere consumption.

The second temptation—to throw himself from the temple—is the temptation to put God to the test, to demand that He prove Himself on our terms. How often do we do this? "God, if you really love me, you'll give me what I want. God, if you're really there, you'll answer my prayer exactly as I've specified." But faith is not about manipulating God. Faith is about trusting Him, even when we don't understand His ways.

The third temptation—to worship Satan in exchange for worldly power—is perhaps the most insidious. It's the temptation to compromise our principles for success, to abandon our integrity for advancement, to exchange eternal treasures for temporal trinkets. And Jesus' response is clear and unequivocal: "The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve."

So what does this mean for us during Lent? The Church, in her wisdom, gives us three practices: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These aren't arbitrary rules meant to make us miserable. They are spiritual weapons, tried and tested over centuries, designed to help us grow in freedom and holiness.

Through prayer, we cultivate that relationship with God that Adam and Eve lost. We learn to hear His voice above the noise of the world and the whispers of the tempter. We humble ourselves before the One who made us and loves us beyond measure.

Through fasting, we train our bodies to obey our wills and our wills to obey God. We break the tyranny of our appetites. We discover that we can say "no" to ourselves, that we are not slaves to our desires. And in our hunger, we remember our deeper hunger—for God, for righteousness, for the Bread of Life.

Through almsgiving, we break the grip of selfishness and greed. We recognize that everything we have is a gift from God, meant to be shared with others. We see Christ in the faces of the poor and respond with generosity.

My brothers and sisters, Lent is not meant to be a grim season of guilt and gloom. Rather, it is a gift—an annual retreat, a time of renewal, an opportunity to start fresh. It is the Church saying to us: Come into the desert with Jesus. Face your demons. Learn to trust God again. Discover the freedom that comes from obedience to the One who loves you.

Yes, the journey will be challenging. Yes, we will stumble along the way. But we do not walk alone. Jesus has gone before us. He has faced every temptation we face—and He has conquered. And now, through our Baptism, we share in His victory. His Spirit dwells within us, giving us the strength to resist, the courage to persevere, the hope to continue.

As we continue this Mass and prepare to receive the Eucharist, let us remember that we receive the very One who defeated sin and death. In this Bread of Life, we find the nourishment that Adam and Eve sought in the forbidden fruit—but this time, it is given freely, offered by Love Himself. Here at this altar, paradise is restored. Here, we taste the life that was lost and has been won back for us.

Let us embrace this Lent with hope and determination. Let us trust that the God who breathed life into Adam, who led Israel through the desert, who strengthened Jesus in His temptation, will be faithful to us as well. And let us look forward to Easter, when we will celebrate not just Jesus' resurrection, but our own rising to new life in Him.

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