How coincidental that this year the first day of March should fall on Ash Wednesday, the first day of the
season of Lent. I thought that the calendar had conspired to bring this point home to me—that the physical and spiritual intersect, which I often let slip, especially when daily life beclouds my inner gaze.
The wife and I welcome this turn of events. Accordingly, on the last night of February, before retiring, we made our plans for the next day. We picked the church where we would attend the Holy Mass and receive ash on the forehead, and reminded the kitchen that for that Wednesday we would go meatless (not a difficult choice for us, who mostly subsist on fish and vegetables).
As forecast, the first day of March entered with a flood of sun, and, with the hour, ratcheted up the temperature, which, not two weeks ago, made us shiver with the wintry winds that strayed into these islands from China. With reason did a weatherman announce that truly we were on the threshold of a long, dry season.
Lent connotes sultry days and idle hours, especially for the children who would be going on a long school vacation. For them this means flying kites, cycling on country roads andgoing to the fields and the beach, and in general conspiring with friends to fill the languor with backyard adventures. Somehow, throughout the warm days, in the midst of their games, the little ones remain mindful of a recurring motif—the Passion and Death of Christ—which reaches a crescendoduring the Holy Week with its long, eye-catching processions.
This year, Lent spills over the month of March. Its duration of forty days corresponds to the forty days and forty nights that Jesus spent in the desert to which the Spirit had led him “to be tempted by the devil,” as Matthew puts it in his Gospel.
Not too many incidents in the Gospel have the qualities of high theater which we find in the showdown between Christ and the devil—exotic setting (the desert, the parapet of the Temple of Jerusalem, a very high mountain), elevated dialogue (an exchange of scriptural passages), and a debate on root issues (hedonism—the satisfaction of physical desire;egoism—the display of power; and materialism—the love of wealth).
Christ fought the temptations back with the word of God, specifically with quotes from Deuteronomy. He said, when the devil urged him to turn the stones into loaves of bread, “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” When the devil challenged him to prove his being the Son of God by throwing himself down from the parapet of the temple, he replied, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Lastly, on a very high mountain, when the devil offered to give him all the magnificent kingdoms of the world if he would just fall to the ground and worship him, Christ snapped at him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’”
We all have to contend with temptation, even those who do not believe in God, who might shrug the idea of temptation off, quoting Oscar Wilde’s “I can resist anything except temptation,” and go on to cultivate their favorite temptations. But they are merely closing their eyes to the reality that, as Shakespeare puts it, “[w]e all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.”
Christ’s temptations supply us with a template for all temptations, which, using St. John’s listing, fall under any of three concupiscences—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. All of which St. Thomas Aquinas says spring from egotism—“inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin.”
And Jesus shows us the way to combat temptation, with the word of God, with Jesus himself, who is the Word of God.
Among the spiritual books I have reserved for reading this month, in keeping with the Lenten season, is the Rule of St. Benedict. In his rule, the saint enumerates 72 instruments of good works. The 50th applies to temptations, “When evil thoughts come into one’s heart, to dash them against Christ—immediately.”
I could not resist the temptation to supply the em dash by way of tribute to the month of March.
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