Well folks, I think I shall inflict a lenten penance upon all of you who read this blog, and I ask that you pay attention! The gospel of the first Sunday on Lent is the account of the temptations of Our Lord in the desert, and in the coming week I shall be writing a series of meditations on them. I will try to explain the significance of each temptation and the implications on our salvation. Some of you may remember I did a similar series of posts on the feast of the Epiphany, and you may find them if you scroll down.
I think I shall start by setting the scene for the temptations.Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. (Matthew Ch. 4 Vs 1 - 3)
We may not know exactly where Our Lord fasted, or are we absolutely certain that it was a period of exactly forty days and nights. But I think it is reasonable to say that our Lord was far away from any sources of food and water, and it is not inprobable that he was on the verge of starvation at the end: afterward he was hungry. Led by the Spirit, we can say that he placed all his trust in the providence of his heavenly Father for the needs of his body.
In these circumstances, tomorrow I shall try to analyse the temptation, command these stones to be loaves of bread. There of course are an infinite number of expositions of this temptation, but I shall give you my own spin, a little different from Fr. Guy's excellent homily at High Mass in the Oratory this morning!
3 comments:
Hi,
Cool, I'm looking forward reading it. I was at the Hight Mass and the Homily was indeed very good. I almost managed to get an evangelical friend to come along. In the end he didn't go, which is a shame. I think Fr. Guy's jab at the Reformation would do him good. :-P
Not very relevant to your post, but I love hearing about Christ's time in the desert and the temptations; there are so many concordances between it, and the Old Testament, esp. the Psalms.
Now, there's something else about it: maybe some Saint's writings, that are nagging at me, explaining about each of the temptations... but I can't remember.
Dear Oliver,
Saint Francis de Sales 'Sermons for Lent' has some useful reflections on Our Lord's forty days in the desert and its meanings for our temptations.
In Christo,
Anthony B
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