[Pearls Ep 160: Preparing for Sunday.]
Welcome to Lent. We pray you had a good start with a holy Ash Wednesday.
Hopefully you’ve had the opportunity over the past weeks to consider your Lenten discipline of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But perhaps Lent has snuck up on you, as things have a way of happening.
This Sunday’s Gospel reading (copied in the postscript) is a great source of inspiration as we travel into the desert with Christ and He fasts for 40 days and is tempted by the enemy.
The tactics satan uses against Christ are the same he uses against us. Satan isn’t particularly creative, but he makes up for it with ruthlessness…
And so in this week’s Pearls of the Interior Life (click here for the video) and follow-up messages we take a look at each of the three temptations satan proposes to Christ.
There are many practical ways to interpret the temptations – we’ll approach them relative to the three classical enemies of humanity – the flesh, the world and satan:
“Command this stone to become bread” – our battle with our fallen nature (“the flesh”).
“Throw yourself down from the parapet [to make the angels protect you]” – our battle against satan and his minions in the spiritual realm.
“[The world] will be yours, if you worship me” – our battle against the pressure to conform to the fallen world around us.
Recall Lent is a time to go into the desert. The desert is a place where everything is laid bare. Our Lenten practices – especially getting rid of noise, distractions, diversions, and indulgences – help us see where and how satan is trapping us with his temptations and diverting us from Christ.
The more clearly we see satan’s schemes in our life, the better we can combat them so that we can draw closer to Christ and more meaningfully enter into His resurrection (and ours!) come Easter.
Lenten blessings –
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Gospel according to Matthew (Mt 4:1-11)
At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards He was hungry.
The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you and with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.”
Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.