THE FALL AND RISE OF MAN

SUNDAY, FIRST WEEK OF LENT   

Gen 2:7-9,3:1-7; Ps 51:3-6,12-14,17; Rom 5:12-19; Mt 4:1-11

Man shall not live by Bread Alone

The readings for this first week of Lent present the two temptations that determined our lot as human beings. The temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the temptation of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, in the wilderness. The first man, Adam, was fully provided for externally, while the last man, Jesus Christ, was well endowed within, for he is the Eternal Word Incarnate. The temptation of Adam and Eve was the commencement of God’s work of making man to be like him, while the temptation of the Son of Man was the completion of making man to be like God. We can also think of it as the test running of the Man made to be like God. In confirmation of this, the author of the letter to the Hebrews affirms that it is to Jesus Christ that God has subjected everything, because he is one whom God truly made Godlike. “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him (man). But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Heb 1:8-9. The first temptation, therefore, samples or reveals our inherent weakness, coming from our use of the free will received from God. The second temptation reveals where the strength of the free will we received from God lies. The strength of our free will lies in tying or consecrating ourselves to the word of God.

These strengths and weaknesses are what the first reading and the Gospel reveal to us. The first reading from Genesis is a sampling of the beauty of the free will man received from God, which is a constitutive part of his being the image of God. In a sense, the temptation is a kind of display or test-running of the human free will, just to prove that it is working or functional. “Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the wild beasts that the Lord God had made. It asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden? The woman answered the serpent, ‘We may eat the fruit of the trees in the garden. But of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden God said, ‘You must not eat it, nor touch it, under pain of death.’” Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’” The episode confirmed to the serpent, to man and woman alike, that the gift of free will is real. They could disobey God, but the cost of the disobedience is so dire that the free will is not really free, but an obligation to follow God’s will. We enjoy real freedom only in obeying God freely and without coercion, for he made us and we belong to Him. Our free will is intact only as long as we obey our Maker and consecrate ourselves to him.

Subsequently, the genuineness of human free will and what preserves it is what the temptation of Jesus Christ shows us. The Son of Man is man completely consecrated to God. In that consecration, the free will of man is fortified beyond measure by God’s immutability. So, the Gospel tells us that Jesus was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted. “Jesus was led by the Spirit out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Before the temptation, he used the means of fasting to strengthen the proper discipline on his human nature, so that it may be properly subject to the Spirit. “He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was very hungry, and the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into loaves.’ But he replied, ‘Scripture says: Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” In all three temptations, Jesus had recourse to the word of God as our life and security.

In the second temptation, seeing that Jesus relied on the word of God, Satan used a scriptural passage to support his attack. Our Lord used the coherence of God’s revelation of Himself in the scriptures to deflate the attack. The third temptation was a mimicry of God’s promise of an everlasting kingdom to his faithful. He offered his stolen kingdom to the Son of Man if he agreed to worship him. Satan used all the vulnerable points of our nature to tempt the Son of Man: sensible appetite, interest in self, leading to misunderstanding of God’s word, power, and riches; on all these three, he found the Son of Man fortified by the word of God through the consecration of his will to God. Hence, the lack of allegiance of the first man to the word of God was the point of entry of sin into the human race. God has blocked that entrance in the renewed human nature in Christ Jesus. God strengthened that weakness by uniting His Word to our human nature in Jesus Christ, in whom we have received eternal life as a gift. Saint Paul, therefore, writes: “If it is certain that death reigned over everyone as the consequence of one man’s fall, it is even more certain that one man, Jesus Christ, will cause everyone to reign in life who receives the free gift that he does not deserve, of being made righteous.” Grace of redemption has been given to us in Jesus Christ as a free gift.

We have shared in the sin and death of Adam and Eve through our disobedience to God’s word. We have now been invited to share in the free gift of eternal life, which God is offering all in Jesus Christ, by the renewal of our minds through faith in Jesus Christ. Through faith in the word of God, we are to renounce our former lives and allegiance to evil to share the life with Jesus Christ. This is the purpose of the Lenten season and the observances therein. We are to receive a new heart, renewed in the love of God, and consecrated to doing his will. “A pure heart create for me, O God, put a steadfast spirit within me.” To overcome the devil and his temptations, we must have Jesus Christ as our way, truth, and life. We must fast from everything that is not the will of God for us, pray in the Spirit at all times in order to discern God’s truth, and we must give ourselves wholly to doing the will of God as revealed in Christ Jesus.

Let us pray: Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observance of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.