First Sunday of Lent
Today is the first Sunday of Lent, a forty-day period of intensified prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that the Catholic Church has observed for nearly two thousand years. The Gospel reading for today is very appropriate—the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. St. Luke tells us that, after being baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days” He fasted and “was tempted by the devil.” (Lk 4:1).
The setting of “the wilderness” and “forty days” is meant to call our minds back to the Old Testament, when God led Israel through the wilderness for forty years. During this time, in order to keep His children going, the Lord fed Israel with “manna” that miraculously came down from heaven. But the Israelites didn’t appreciate this miraculous food. Instead, they longed for the delicacies they had back in the land of Egypt: “Oh that we had meat to eat!” (Num 11:4). Due to their incessant complaining about their dietary restrictions, God punished the Israelites in the worst way He could—by giving them exactly what they wanted. You want meat like you had back in Egypt? Fine, here’s your meat (Num 11:31-32). But remember what else Egypt had? Plagues: “While the meat was yet between their teeth… the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague” (Num 11:33).
Adam lost paradise because he refused to obey the dietary restrictions that God imposed (Gen 2:17), and instead gave into Satan’s temptation (Gen 3:1-7). The Israelites likewise lost the promised land because they didn’t trust in God’s provision (Deut 1:34-35). However, today’s Gospel reading reminds us that Jesus, “the son of Adam, the son of God” (Lk 3:38), did not listen to the voice of the serpent. As the new Adam, and the personal embodiment of God’s son Israel, Jesus reversed the sin of mankind through observing a forty day fast.
The Church reminds us of this reality at the beginning of Lent as an encouragement to persevere in our own Lenten observation. Like Jesus, we were filled with the Holy Spirit at baptism, and it is this same Spirit who has led us into the wilderness of Lent, where He will help us withstand the temptations of the devil while we fast. As St. Paul informs us, Israel’s sins in the wilderness “took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Cor 10:6). Although they “all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink” (1 Cor 10:3), the wilderness generation took these miraculous gifts for granted, and were condemned. Because they couldn’t fast, they couldn’t appreciate the Lord’s gifts.
May it never be true of us! May we never take the Eucharistic bread of heaven for granted! May we never think that God’s provision isn’t enough in the midst of our fasting! Instead, let us heed the words of St. Basil the Great: “Since we did not fast, we fell from paradise. Well, now let us fast, so that we may go back again” (On Fasting, 4.)
Ben Bollinger is a convert to Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy. He has an undergraduate degree in theology and computer science from Elmhurst University and has appeared on several podcasts to discuss his own conversion story as well as his research into various theological topics. His personal blog is https://benjaminjohn.substack.com, where he writes about subjects such as Church history, theology, and biblical studies.