Luke 4:1-13

Deuteronomy 26:4-10

Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15

Romans 10:8-13

Luke 4:1-13

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan

and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days,

to be tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing during those days,

and when they were over he was hungry.

The devil said to him,

“If you are the Son of God,

command this stone to become bread.”

Jesus answered him,

“It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”

Then he took him up and showed him

all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.

The devil said to him,

“I shall give to you all this power and glory;

for it has been handed over to me,

and I may give it to whomever I wish.

All this will be yours, if you worship me.”

Jesus said to him in reply,

“It is written

            You shall worship the Lord, your God,

                        and him alone shall you serve.”

Then he led him to Jerusalem,

made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him,

“If you are the Son of God,

throw yourself down from here, for it is written:

            He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,

 and:

            With their hands they will support you,

            lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Jesus said to him in reply,

“It also says,

            You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

When the devil had finished every temptation,

he departed from him for a time.

Opening Prayer: Lord God, you are all-knowing and all-powerful. You know how I will be tempted and what I need to do to be victorious. Grant me your grace in abundance and the virtues of faith, hope, and charity in need to be your faithful child.

Encountering the Word of God

1. Victory over the Dragon: The Gospels of Luke and Matthew each detail the temptations the devil used to tempt Jesus but give them in a slightly different order. The third temptation of Matthew takes place on the mountain, and his Gospel ends on a mountain, where Jesus is worshiped by his disciples. In Luke’s account, the third temptation takes place on the parapet of the Temple and his Gospel ends with Jesus ascending to the heavenly temple (Luke 24:51). “The temptation involves [Jesus’] identity as the Son of God, and with his ascension Jesus is vindicated as ‘Son of the Most High’ (Luke 1:32). In order to bolster his third temptation, the devil tries Jesus’ tactic of quoting scripture, citing two consecutive verses of a psalm (Psalm 91:11-12). However, the devil has chosen the wrong psalm, as its following verse predicts his own demise: ‘You can tread upon the asp and the viper, / trample the lion and the dragon’ (Psalm 91:13). Jesus not only fulfills this verse, which recalls the promise of victory after the fall (Genesis 3:15), but will refer to it when he shares with his disciples this ‘power “to tread upon serpents” … and upon the full force of the enemy’ (Luke 10:19)” (Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, 95).

2. Freed from Slavery: During Lent, the First Readings are chosen not to complement the Gospel but to give an overview of the most important moments in salvation history. We begin in Year C with Moses’ confession of Israel’s confession of faith in the Lord, who redeemed his covenant family from bondage in Egypt and gave them the Land he promised to Abraham, our father in the faith (see Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament, 314). In Deuteronomy 26, Moses is speaking about the obligation of the Israelites to go to the central sanctuary to worship. “When they come, they are to recite the history of salvation in order to commemorate it before the Lord” (Bergsma, The Word of the Lord: Year C, 68). When Moses commands the people to say, “My father was a wandering Aramean,” Moses is referring to the Patriarch Jacob, the grandson of Abraham and the father of the tribes of Israel. When the people worship, they are to bring the first fruits of the soil and recognize that they were given to them by the Lord. In our worship on Sunday, we recall the great act of salvation accomplished by Jesus, our kinsman redeemer. We offer God the Father the Bread of Life and the Wine of Salvation in thanksgiving, asking him to accept our sacrifice united to that of his Son.

3. One Savior, Jesus Christ: The Second Readings, on the first five Sundays of Lent, are chosen, not to bring out an aspect of the Sunday Gospel passage, but to give us some of Paul’s most important passages on the Good News of salvation reaching us through faith in Jesus and his Resurrection. In Romans 10:8-13, Paul teaches that just as the Torah was close to the people of Israel, so now the saving Word of God is near and more accessible than ever: “in the incarnation, Christ came down from the Father; in the resurrection, Christ was brought up from the dead; in the preaching of the apostles, the word of faith has come near; and in the Christian confession of faith, the word can be found in your mouth and in your heart” (Hahn and Mitch, Romans, 178). Believing in Jesus and accepting the gospel leads to life. Paul stresses that Israel can be justified and saved if they confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised Jesus from the dead (Hahn and Mitch, Romans, 179).

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, I believe in your victory over the devil and that you are truly my redeemer. You have saved me from sin and death, and I am forever grateful.

Living the Word of God: Five days into Lent, how has it gone? What has gone well, and what needs improvement? Did I “give up” something for Lent? Has this brought me closer to God? Where do I want to be at the end of the forty days of Lent?