OMELIE / Omelie EN

26 feb 2023

26/02/2023 - 1st Sunday of Lent - year A

26/02/2023 - 1^st Sunday of Lent - year A

Reading 1 GN 2,7-9;3,1-7 Psalm 50 Reading 2 ROM 5,12-19 Gospel MT 4,1-11

Why do we celebrate a time of penance like Lent? Today’s readings let us know we are all sinners, and that sin has ruined our life, made us suffer and has ruined the relationships among us. If we let it continue with its work, it will continue ruining men and making them suffer. We need to recover our strengths and skills we lost to sin, and mend mind and heart ruined by it.

But what is sin anyway? Is it still meaningful to talk about sin in a world which does not use this word anymore, even worse, it rejects it spitefully? It is true, sin is not mentioned anymore in public, because the man does not feel responsible anymore in front of God. In fact, sin is about our relationship with God, it is an act of distrust in Him made by a creature of His, by one of His children, by a person who believes in Him. In practice, the word sin is used only by the believer in God.

The man who believes is tempted by the thought of God possibly forgetting about men, or uninterested in them, or even of His non-existence. Some other thought might suggest to men that God’s word is not to be taken seriously, that it is better to act according to the way they feel, and according to their interests rather than according to what God is telling us. So these thoughts separate the man from God’s love, make them estranged. Through these thoughts men become arrogant, selfish, open themselves up to egotism. There you go, the sin spread in the world, a sin which exists under different shapes and looks depending on it being about economic interests or sexuality or social relationships both in private and in public.

Today’s first reading is telling us about Adam and Eve’s sin, symbolic to understand the sin of every man or woman: it is the ‘original’ sin, so the one which all others came from, the sin of arrogance. Adam and Eve think God is tricking them, they believe to the thought making them convinced that God is jealous of their freedom. And so they find themselves alone: being far from God, Tey are ashamed of themselves and begin accusing each other. They do not have trust in each other anymore, and they lose the serenity. The lack of trust so common in our society nowadays, is it not maybe a consequence of this type of sin spread in everyone’s life?

The Gospel is telling us that the work of the tempting evil is not sparing anyone, not even the God’s Son. Jesus faces these thoughts, countering them with the praying and fasting.

When they show up, He defeats them by repeating the Word of God and counting on it. That Word is His rock. He does not accept doubting the Father and His love! So no temptation can separate from Him the Father’s heart. The tempting evil tries to corrupt Jesus’s faith, His hope and also His charity. He would like Him to use the faith to perform miracles in order to satisfy His hunger. He would like Him to use the hope to tempt God in order to force Him to intervene with sensational prodigies. He also suggests to show charity to all men by using the powers coming from Satan.

Jesus overcomes the test with His obedience: He remains firmly attached to the Word of the Scriptures, beginning a new society, the one of the disciples who will join Him in obeying the Father. This society is made of Adam’s descendants who are purified and renewed by going through the Baptism. They receive the justification and sanctification thanks to Jesus, thanks to the victory Jesus has established in the forty days spent in the desert, and has completed when Satan came back to tempt Him in the Garden and on the cross.

We, weak in front of the temptation, are now strong thanks to Jesus’s victory! We are training ourselves during Lent to always be united to Him and to exchange our thoughts with His.