Homily

We began the Lenten journey with the celebration of Ash Wednesday. The ashes reminded us that we are truly dust: our pride is dust, as are our security, our desire to prevail, our self-promotion, and the way we wear ourselves out doing our own things. But we were also reminded that the Lord bent down over this dust that we are so that it would reignite into a fire of liberation. During his time of intercession, Abraham said to the Lord, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes...” From that dust rose a prayer to save the city. And the Lord bent down to Abraham and listen to his prayer. How different is the story told about Adam and Eve at the beginning of the book of Genesis. We heard that God had put them in a garden that he himself had planted so that they might live in joy and peace. But they forgot their weakness and the fact they were dust and preferred to listen to the voice of the serpent, the tempter, who encouraged them to take pride in being like God. And even though they had often spoken with God, who loved to walk and talk with then, they preferred to obey the serpent who tempted them. Their hearts were filled with the pride suggested by the serpent and they disobeyed God. So they found themselves expelled from the garden, alone, naked and afraid.
This ancient story is not relegated to the beginning of the world. In truth, it is the banal and sad story of each one of us every time we decide to follow the urgings of pride and self-satisfaction and forget God’s company and word. We always find ourselves naked, stripped of affection, friendship, and the meaning of life. The serpent’s voice is persuasive and insidious, and corrupts everything, even the most intimate friends become enemies. This is how hatred and wars, violence and injustice, are born and populations with so much in common end up fighting with ferocity. The garden that God had planted becomes a desert with no life or love. But the Lord does not abandon his people, and in his compassion, follows them into the desert and finds them. That is what Matthew’s Gospel tells us today. Yes, the Lord Jesus entered the desert and stayed there for forty days. The evangelist notes that this was not Jesus’ free choice or a personal initiative. He was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness.” Jesus let himself be led by the Spirit, the Spirit that had come down on him at his Baptism. The young prophet from Nazareth had not come to do his own will but the will of the Father. Jesus needed to be obedient to change the course of human history, which was marked by the disobedience of Adam. The apostle Paul writes about this to the Romans: “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (5:19). Obedient to the Father, Jesus comes to us and asks us to accompany him during this time, these forty days. Let us not lose sight of him as he enters the desert of our world, not as a strong and powerful man, but as one who is obedient, good, meek, and humble of heart. That is how he wages his battle against the prince of this world, who never stops tempting men and women to stray from God’s plan and make the desert even more deserted.
The three temptations recounted by the evangelist represent the tempter’s persistence in trying to trap Jesus, and the unavoidable struggle that he must undertake. Jesus was made similar to human beings, to us, even in temptation so that he could help us struggle against evil and let God’s love prevail. The evangelist writes that the devil came to Jesus when his strength had been sapped by the forty days of fasting. And he urged Jesus to change stones into bread. Jesus would have good reasons to give in. What is more natural than urging someone who is hungry to eat? Do not we have to think about ourselves before we can think about others? But Jesus – who will indeed multiply the loaves for the five thousand men – does not think about satisfying his own hunger. Instead he answers the tempter with the believer’s only source of strength: the Word of God. It alone can satisfy the hunger of the heart and defeat our obsession with our own well-being: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4).
Then Jesus lets himself be carried up to the pinnacle of the temple: “Throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” We could say that this is the temptation of living without making an effort to walk with others. It is the temptation of always being at the centre, of not seeing anything else, of insisting that everything rotate around us and that everyone, even the angels, be at our service. But the Lord does not relieve us of the responsibility of working alongside our brothers and sisters.
The tempter continues. After he has carried Jesus to a high mountain and shown him “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour,” he tells him, “this can all be yours.” It is the temptation of power, the desire to possess things. Jesus proclaims his liberty by affirming that one should only bow down before God: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” How often instead do we accumulate things, thinking we will use them but end up their slaves! We can even destroy our own lives and the lives of others, especially the weakest. In the desert of this world, Jesus comes to reaffirm the primacy of God and his kingdom of love. Three times – always – he repeats “It is written...” It is with the Gospel, repeated unceasingly to ourselves and the world, that we can defeat and drive away the prince of evil. Not with our own strength, but only with the strength of the Gospel can we uproot evil from our heart and defeat the power of the devil. Let us join together with Jesus, meek and humble of heart, and yell at the ancient tempter, “Away with you, Satan!” The ashes that we are have been chosen by the Lord to be a new strength, a new prophecy, to drive back the desert of our world and grow new life. The desert turns into an inhabited land, just as when the angels came to Jesus to serve him. If we live this season the way Jesus lived those forty days, the desert will be inhabited by men and women who, like angels, will come close to the poor and serve them. This season is a good time to be close to the Lord, to welcome his Gospel into our hearts, and to imitate him in his struggle against evil, transforming the desert into a garden of consolation and love.