D. 1st LENT (A)
Mt 4,1-11
Lent is not a time to examine ourselves to feel like sinners and ask God to get us out of there. Once the joy of feeling forgiven has passed, the anguish of failing again followed. We must give way to an awareness of our possibilities of absolute.
Lent is a time to analyze our lives and discover the steps that lead us away from the goal. Don’t stop to analyze the stone you tripped on; pay more attention to walking to avoid the stumble. It’s also not about doing penance so that God will forgive you. Realize that reaching the goal is your own responsibility and requires effort.
More important than looking back, agonizing over missteps, is discovering the right direction and walking in that direction. But it turns out I can’t know where the goal is, because I’ve never been there. Here comes the help of the experience of other human beings who have reached it and can point us the way.
The story of Jesus’ temptations warns us of the need to overcome the easy path so as not to be deceived by immediate pleasure. It’s not about any external devil, but a tendency that allowed life to enrich itself for almost four thousand years.
The first temptation seeks to turn Jesus into an oppressed figure and offers him freedom in exchange for bread. The second offers him honor and glory in exchange for servitude. The third is an offer of absolute power over all. Both oppressing and allowing oneself to be oppressed are satanic options. Oppression is the only sin that prevents us from being human.
No one today would take the account of Genesis as a historical fact. The sin of Adam is an ancestral myth that we find in many cultures. This does not mean that it is a lie. The myth is an attempt to explain the inexplicable. The story of original sin attempts to explain the problem of evil, starting from the categories of that time.
Neither is the account of the temptations historical. It is a mythical narrative just like the story of Adam and Eve. Jesus often withdrew to the desert to discover his authentic self. The narrative summarizes the trials he had to overcome in his life. In Jesus, temptation has a special connotation, because it is posed according to his personal situation.
They tell us in great detail what happened after the forty days of fasting, but they tell us nothing about what Jesus did during that time. Jesus did not go to the desert to be tempted by the devil but to deeply meditate on himself.
No demon tempted Jesus. Temptation is something inherent to all human beings. It’s the best argument in favor of his humanity. Whoever hasn’t realized that life is a struggle has guaranteed absolute failure. We are all given infinite possibilities of fulfillment, but achieving them requires putting all the meat on the grill to achieve it.
It’s not a choice between good and evil. That alternative is not real because evil cannot move the will. It’s about discerning what is good and what is bad, going beyond appearances. The struggle is between real good and apparent (evil). Once I discover that something is bad for me, I don’t have to make any effort to avoid it.
We don’t need any devil to tempt us. Temptation is inherent to human beings. As intelligence arises, it has the capacity to know two goals and has no choice but to choose. Since knowledge is limited, the possibility of making a mistake is always there. And it often happens that by adhering to what one believed was good, one encounters what is bad.
If the problem isn’t in the will, we won’t resolve it with voluntarism. Here is one of the causes of our failure in the fight against sin. We have been urged to use willpower to overcome temptation, but that strategy is ineffective.
Fray Marcos
English version translated with AI