Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

In the Gospel of Luke on this first Sunday of Lent we hear of Jesus' forty days of prayer and fasting in the desert, followed by the devil's efforts to tempt Him. The appropriateness of this reading for the beginning of Lent is obvious. The liturgical season of Lent is meant, among other things, for us in a particular way to imitate these forty days of prayer and fasting by Jesus.

Clearly, Lent is a season of penance. Catholics are required to obey fasting rules and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and to abstain from meat on all the Fridays of Lent as well. In addition, traditionally we offer up some other form of individual penance throughout Lent, such as giving up a favorite type of food or activity. Regardless of what individual penance is chosen, the Church encourages all of us to commit ourselves to prayer and penance in a special way during Lent. But what is the point of all this? Why are we giving up things that are undeniably good? For one thing, of course, when we do penance, we are making reparation for our sins. However, there is more at stake here than just "making up for sins," as it were. We do penance for our own good, to strengthen and raise our own nature to its proper level. The forsaking of specific material goods, at least temporarily, helps us to maintain a right ordering of ourselves towards God and His creation.

The first temptation mentioned in the Gospel, of turning stones into bread, is an obvious appeal to an attachment to material things, encouraging Jesus to work a miracle in order to break His fast. The second temptation, of receiving power over all earthly kingdoms in exchange for worshipping the devil, is clearly an attempt to use the seducing attraction of earthly power and control over other people. The third temptation, to throw Himself off the top of the Temple because God will not allow Him to fall, is perhaps more subtle, and actually uses part of the responsorial psalm for this Sunday, Psalm 91: "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." Obviously, there is nothing wrong with these lines. The psalm is encouraging us to place our trust in God. However, in the context of the temptation the problem is the action to which these words are connected. Although Jesus obviously would have been able to throw Himself off the top of the Temple and survive, such a miracle would have had no purpose other than impressing others. It would have been the act of a sensationalist Messiah, intent not on helping human beings but rather on gaining their worldly acclaim, respect, and perhaps even fear. Thus, the three temptations listed in the Gospel today can roughly be broken down as appealing to desires for material things, worldly power, and earthly fame or recognition. Each of these temptations, and indeed in some sense every temptation, represents a disordering of things, in which attachment to some purely worldly good is put ahead of spiritual goods and ahead of God. Lent, as a season of prayer and penance, should prepare us to resist such temptations and inordinate attachments.

Things we are attached to are things that we think we need. The concept of "needing" something is always an interesting one, because it can mean a number of different things. First of all, we need God. This is the only need which can properly be called absolute. We constantly need the help of God in life, and on an even more basic level, we would simply cease to be if God did not constantly uphold us in existence. We also sometimes say that we need another human being. For example, a husband might say about his wife, "I need her." This cannot mean the kind of absolute need that we have for God, but it can still represent a valid truth about relationships between persons. In our example, the husband's statement might well be true if what he means is something along the lines of: "I would fundamentally not be the same without her. If she were not here I would in some sense be less than I am; there would be something missing in me." This type of need applied to a person is fine, as long as the need arises from a relationship of love. We may need others because we love them, and hopefully they love us as well, but it is quite another thing if we need others in a selfish way, or as a means to some further end of our own, unconcerned with their good. For example, we must not need others in the sense of needing to use others selfishly to increase our own wealth, or needing to have power and control over others, or needing others to inflate our egos by treating us with worldly respect and admiration. In these cases the things we really need, and that we are attached to, are not the other people themselves, but the earthly possessions, power, pride, etc., that we get by using these other people. In effect, we are treating others as if they did not have their own dignity as persons, so that we can use them like material things as means to satisfy our own purely worldly "needs."

Now we come to material things themselves. Here the only really valid sense in which the word need can be used is the sense of physical need for survival. We need some minimum level of food, shelter, and so forth, in order to maintain our bodies in life. Beyond that, there should not really be any such thing as a need for material things. Generally, there is nothing wrong with the things themselves. We all enjoy various material goods. There is a reason they are called "goods." They are, or can be, good. God created them for us. Unfortunately, however, we have a strong tendency to let our connection to these goods get out of order. The connection to purely material goods is good only insofar as it remains within an ordering to God as our true and ultimate good, and thus within an ordering in which material goods are part of an ordering to interpersonal orders. Thus, we should be able to give up these material goods when necessary, but too often we find this very difficult. We begin to think we need our things, our "stuff," in the same way that we may need other people, or even in the way that we need God. The potential moral problems with this are obvious. When we are in situations which require us to choose the good of another person over our own material attachments, we may not be ready to do it. When our duty to God conflicts with our desires for possessions or money or power on earth, the choice to follow God will not be as easy for us as it should be. We find ourselves constantly fighting an inner war against these inordinate attachments.

Penance and sacrifice help us to overcome these weaknesses in our natures, and Lent in particular is an opportune time for us to work on these areas. By giving up a particular type of worldly good temporarily, we establish our ability to do without that good, making sure that we do not need it in any spiritually unhealthy sense. In the end, making that effort really gives us much greater freedom as persons. Even our secular culture recognizes this in some ways. Being unable to do without alcohol, or unable to stop smoking cigarettes, is not considered a sign of strength and freedom. On the contrary, even those who have those conditions often acknowledge that they wish they could free themselves from their addictions. The truth is, though, that in a way we all have the same lack of freedom in some areas. We all have worldly "needs" that we are unwilling to give up even for a moment for the love of God and other people. Part of all penitential practices, and one of the purposes of the season of Lent, is developing the ability to let go of these things. If with God's help we are able to let go, then that in turn gives us the freedom to enjoy material goods within a proper ordering to love, with the ability to suffer the loss of such things as well for the sake of that higher ordering. This is fully human and authentically free way to appreciate the material gifts that God sends us. When we as human beings allow ourselves to be bound things other than love for God and other persons, we damage our own humanity. In Lent and throughout the year we must constantly strive to free ourselves from inordinate bonds with material possessions, so that we are free to love God and other people as we should.