Thank you, thank you, thank you. Infinite thanks for having been so close as to expose yourself to temptation and experience firsthand the weakness of human beings who fail to rise on the flight towards the freedom that You, the Father and the Spirit, whisper in the depths of the soul, while our ears become deaf and our eyes lower their eyelids to not see.
You felt hunger, after forty days and nights without tasting a morsel. Hunger for food? *“It is written: man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”* You weren’t talking about snacks or lentils… You were talking about spiritual food, which renews and gladdens the heart; which helps in bad times and in the journey of each day. Your resounding answer was, what is now commonly called, a put-down (1). Yes, surely you were hungry for good food, but not for the malicious spectacle that the tempter was proposing to you. You made it very clear.
He continued insisting: *“The devil carried him to the holy capital (Jerusalem) and placed him on the edge of the temple (of David) and said to him: “If you are Son of God, throw yourself down…”* He invoked Psalm 91 and waited. With five words, *”You shall not tempt the Lord your God,”* you took the manipulative and sibylline temptation from religious power out of play. Second blow.
It started again, just in case I finally managed to intimidate you. The text says: “He led him to a very high mountain, and showed him the kingdoms of the world and their glory. All this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” The culmination, the “ultimate offer.” Who can resist? The kingdoms of the world were not many that were known in your time. Today, the planet Earth is becoming private property of a few untrustworthy people who have no right. I imagine you with a high tone of voice, imperatively: “Get behind me, Satan, because it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only you shall serve.” Third and final slap.
Thomas Keating (2) says about Jesus’ temptations: “Jesus’s response was not dialogue, but firm trust in the word of God, rejecting programs of happiness based on personal glorification.” Well said.
I reread the gospel text again (Mt 4, 1-11) and I am overcome with a sad feeling. What is it about humans that we aspire to material things that have an expiration date? Forgetting that we come into the world with a final deadline: death. How deluded!
Another Cistercian monk, Thomas Merton said: “The greatest human temptation is to settle for too little” (3). Knowing Merton, it’s clear that he isn’t referring to material goods and various riches, but to spiritual life. He directs his gaze to the inner path, to spiritual life. To grow in the way of prayer, contemplation, and simplicity of life. And, indeed, we settle for little if we remain anchored on the surface.
We come into the world with a seed planted in the depths of the soul. The Sower planted his divine seed, and if life is only superficial, it runs the risk of being buried by layers of fear, oblivion, laziness, apathy, settling for too little, as the monk says. I dare say he’s not wrong. I venture to say it’s the X-ray of our time.
Let us take advantage of the time of Lent that we begin today, to organize the interior furnishings, with the certainty that it will help us to live with the freedom that Jesus shows by driving away temptations.
Give us a hand, please, we are weak!
Mari Paz López Santos
FEADULTA, February 22, 2026
Sunday I of Lent
(1) Zasca: sharp retort, jest, reprimand. (From the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy)
(2) Thomas Keating (1923-2018, abbot and Cistercian monk (Spencer Monastery, Massachusetts) Known for the Centering Prayer method
(3) “No Man Is an Island,” Thomas Merton, 1955
English version translated with AI