2026-02-22 Lent 1

Scripture Readings

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen!

The Shrove Tuesday pancakes have been eaten and enjoyed as the last of the sweet treats before Easter. The ashes have adorned our foreheads to remind us of our mortality. The water used to clean them off reminds us of our Baptism which has washed our sins away. Our Lenten pilgrimage and journey has begun anew this year - our journey to the cross. This is the blessed and holy season of Lent. The season that is described as a “bright sadness.” And, like many other examples in life, we get as much out of this season as we put into it. The temptation always surrounds us and bombards us to allow this special and holy time to become like any other time of the year. Yet, it is not. Lent, with all of its purplely goodness, and minor-key hymns is designed with care to really help us prepare ourselves for Easter.

To recap Ash Wednesday, there are three main spiritual disciplines that can accompany us along the Lenten journey to Easter if we will walk with them: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving. The first two we see illustrated for us in the Gospel lesson by Jesus Himself. Lent also began as a time for people to prepare for Baptism in the church. The spiritual disciplines, paired with regularly attending Church shaped the new believers into followers of Christ: those who believe in Jesus as their Savior and who seek to live as His people every day of their lives.

The difficulty is always in the temptation. It is safe to say that the whole world pretty much hates Lent and the personal depravity that surround the season. Delaying gratification just doesn’t sell very well. Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday originally began as the last night of eating rich foods before the Lenten fast has now morphed into enormous carnivals of excess and debauchery! A month ago already the Easter candy is already adorning the shelves. Cadbury Cream Eggs, mini-eggs & Chocolate bunnies they tantalize us and tempt us to abandon the fast and indulge ourselves! Temptation bombards us on every side! Lord have mercy!

Really, this is what temptation is. It’s a fork in the road on our Lenten path. Indeed there are many forks in the road, many temptations that seek to pull us off course on our pilgrimage to the cross! Forget about Lent all together. Treat it like any other time. Indulge in rich foods. Live for yourself. Give up praying. Spend your money on yourself rather than others. Buy Easter candy now and gobble it down. Pursue sin as opposed to virtue and righteousness. St. Peter’s words should be our Lenten mantra: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1Ptr 5:8).

I remember as a kid watching the Crocodile Dundee movies. That is a looong time ago now. But I liked the whole Australian thing and the gigantic knife he carried around with him. I think you must need a big knife like that if you are to hang out in the Australian outback! Everything out there wants to kill you. Poisonous snakes. Scorpions. Spiders. Kangaroos with machine guns! You get the idea. There’s a beautiful plant that grows there called a “sundew.” It has a slender stem and tiny, round leaves fringed with hairs that glisten with bright drops of liquid as delicate as fine dew. Although its attractive clusters of red, white, and pink blossoms are harmless, the leaves are deadly. The shiny moisture on each leaf is sticky and will imprison any bug that touches it. As an insect gets stuck and struggles to free itself, the vibration causes the leaves to close tightly around it. This innocent-looking plant then feeds on its unsuspecting victim! How sinister!

This little example is exactly how temptation works. It looks beautiful and innocent and even good on the outside, but in the end it is deadly and it will kill you! It’s quite reminiscent of the Garden of Eden, isn’t it? People were tempted by Satan to eat the forbidden fruit. To do the wrong thing. To walk a path that was not God’s will. And, at the end of that road was death! This is why Christ Jesus goes into the desert to be tempted by Satan. And, He goes into the wastelands hungry, having fasted for 40 days and for 40 nights. His temptation was very real, the very same kind that we experience - yet He is victorious where we failed.

How does our Lord triumph over Satan? Firstly by fasting. He does not let His hunger over power Him. He controls His flesh, not the other way around. This forms the template for a Lenten fast that lasts for 40 days. It is to experience hunger and then realize that it will not dominate us. Jesus quotes the Scriptures in the face of such temptation: “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord”” (Dt 8:3). By rejecting this first temptation, Jesus rejects an earthly kingdom and shows us not to pursue earthly comfort in the “food which perishes” (JN 6:27). While Adam disregarded the divine word of God in order to pursue the passions of the body (Gn 3), the New Adam - Christ our Lord - conquers all temptation by the divine word, giving human nature the power to conquer Satan and stay strong in the face of temptation.

Too often we let the old-man, the old Adam or the old Eve, in us get the upper hand, thinking “well, God will forgive me anyways, I might as well sin.” This kind of thinking misses the point completely. In fact, it even echoes the essence of “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Dt 6:16). We test God when we take His forgiveness for granted. We test God when we pursue a life of sin and iniquity when we know better. We put our God to the test when we willingly jump off the cliff of temptation and expect that God’s grace will catch us. Lent calls us away from such thinking that leads to death and more misery. Lent calls us to repentance. Lent calls us to abandon our lusts of the flesh and walk the road to the cross, seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness. Anything less is to wander into the desert and be destroyed by Satan, like the leaves of the sundew constricting around the bugs in the Outback!

But the uncanny thing is that Satan cannot force us to do evil. “For as a chained dog,” says St. Augustine, “can bite none but those who go near him, so the devil cannot harm with his temptations those who do not consent to them. Like the dog, he can bark at you, but cannot bite you against your will.” Here we see that Satan doesn’t work by force. Instead, he works by persuasion. So often in our world we see governments or dictators or bullies operating this way, forcing their authoritarian ideas upon others. The devil doesn’t do this. He does not force our consent, he solicits it! He begs us to join him in iniquity rather than join Jesus in righteousness. The fork is in the middle of the road on our Lenten journey, and indeed all of our earthly lives. There are snares everywhere. It is only by clinging to Christ our Savior that we stand a chance. For He is the only one who walked the road perfectly, defending Himself with fasting, with prayer, and with the word of God. And all these things He gives to us freely for our salvation. Use them!

Fasting is more than not eating food. It’s about bringing the body under control of the Spirit and this is not that we may look spiritual in front of our friends. Rather all the spiritual disciplines of Lent are designed to bring us closer to our Savior, to bring the will of God to the forefront of our hearts and minds. To help us be who God has made us to be in our Baptism: His forgiven followers. Fasting is firstly a fasting from sin and embracing Christ’s victory over Satan as our own. May His word of forgiveness, life and salvation bless and guard us as we journey to the cross this blessed Lenten Season. Amen!