Who Creates Anew? A Lenten Reflection

A Scriptural Reflection on the First Sunday of Lent | Carl E. Olson

Readings for Sunday, February 21, 2010:
• Deut. 26:4-10
• Psa. 91:1-2, 10-11, 12-13, 14-15
• Rom. 10:8-13
• Lk. 4:1-13

A popular contemporary hymn sung in many parishes on Ash Wednesday contains these lyrics:

We rise again from ashes, from the good we've failed to do.
We rise again from ashes, to create ourselves anew.

However sincere the hymnist’s intentions, Ash Wednesday and Lent are most assuredly not about creating ourselves anew. On the contrary, they should help us to recognize that only God can accomplish the necessary work of making us new creations through the gratuitous gift of His own divine life:

Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself. (2 Cor 5:17-18; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1999)

At Lent, the disciple is called to follow more closely in the steps of his Master, to take up the cross, and to follow Him into the wilderness in preparation for the Paschal Triduum. Drawing upon today’s epistle reading, we see that Lent helps us appreciate more deeply that salvation comes through calling upon the name of the Lord.

This theme of calling upon God for salvation and deliverance runs through all of today’s readings, starting with Moses’ declaration about the offering of first fruits to God. This passage has been described by some biblical scholars as a sort of “credo,” or confession of faith in God by the people of Israel. It includes a recollection of what God has done for the people, beginning with His call to Abraham and emphasizing His deliverance of His people from the bonds of slavery in Egypt. “We cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers,” Moses reminds the people, “and he heard our cry.” As today’s Psalm also declares: “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him.”

This provides deeper context for the Gospel reading. Having just been baptized by His cousin, John (Lk 3:21-22; Matt 3:16-17), Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert for forty days. This, of course, is the basis for the Lenten season. But why did Jesus go to be tempted by the devil? After all, being sinless, He wasn’t going to give into temptation, was He? It’s rather easy to say that now, with the benefit of hindsight, but Scripture also explains that Jesus was fully divine and human and “has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

St. Ambrose wrote that it was fitting that the “first Adam was cast out of Paradise into the desert” so we might see “how the second Adam returned from the desert to Paradise.” Where the old Adam had failed when tempted by the serpent, the new Adam would remain faithful (CCC 538-540). If Jesus had not fought the devil, Ambrose reasoned, “he would not have conquered him for me.”

Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert also revisited the forty years spent by the Israelites in the desert following their baptism, if you will, in the Red Sea. The three temptations Jesus faced were the same temptations faced by the chosen people of the Old Covenant: choosing physical comfort over obedience to God, attempting to succeed without suffering, and loudly demanding God’s miraculous intervention rather than quietly trusting in Him. The first temptation was to put physical comforts over spiritual responsibilities. The second temptation was to pursue power instead of sacrificial service. And the third temptation was to seek glory instead of humility. As we know well, these ancient temptations are timeless, as attractive and deadly today as they were centuries ago.

“The temptation in the desert,” states the Catechism, “shows Jesus, the humble Messiah, who triumphs over Satan by his total adherence to the plan of salvation willed by the Father” (CCC 566). The confrontation between Jesus and the devil in the desert foreshadowed the battle that would take place on Good Friday. Whereas the devil unsuccessfully tempted Jesus to leap from the temple, Jesus would later willingly ascend the Cross and leap into the abyss of death. For us. So that we might be new creations.

Without that leap of love, we are lost.

(This column originally appeared in the February 25, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Related Ignatius Insight Articles and Book Excerpts:

• Lent: Why the Christian Must Deny Himself | Brother Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B.
• The Premises of Gospel Poverty | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Lent and "Our Father": The Path of Prayer | Carl E. Olson
• Thirsting and Quenching | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Seeking Deep Conversion | From Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• "Lord, teach us to pray" | From Earthen Vessels | Gabriel Bunge, O.S.B.
• The Religion of Jesus | From Christ, The Ideal of the Priest | Blessed Columba Marmion
• Blessed Columba Marmion: A Deadly Serious Spiritual Writer | Christopher Zehnder
• Seeing Jesus in the Gospel of John | Excerpts from On The Way to Jesus Christ | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Encountering Christ in the Gospel | Excerpt from My Jesus | Christoph Cardinal Schönborn