Lenten Reflections: 1st Sunday of Lent

The readings presented to us today are all about temptation. On Ash Wednesday, we endeavoured to make the commitment for the next forty days to abstain, reduce, give and think about our Christian lives in the lead-up to Easter.
This Sunday follows up that commitment with the things that we realise all too often: the problem of temptation. As we try to avoid the things we know are harmful to us, to reduce the things we indulge in, and to give more to those in need, we become more susceptible to our habitual ways of sin; and we realise just how hard the promises we make to ourselves are to keep.

A friend recently told me that even if you break a promise during Lent, that is what repentance is there for. It means you can get back on the horse even if you've been bucked off countless times. It's not about giving up and feeling like a failure. It's about carrying on, because we recognise that we are sinners, and we can keep going with God walking by our side. This is not to say that repentance can forgive intentional wrongdoing. We must have fallen by the wayside through real frailty, rather than intentional rebelliousness. But it means that God's door is not closed to us on our Lenten journey.

The first reading today was the familiar narrative from Genesis. Eve is tempted to eat from the tree in the Garden of Eden, and the serpent successfully persuades her and Adam to do so, and as a result, they lose their innocence and purity. This is largely an extended metaphor for how we are tempted to fall from God's grace, and how when we stray from righteousness, we lose part of our soul in our sinful actions. Eating the apple may not have been inherently bad, but the intention and subsequent action of Eve's betrayal of God's command was bad. We know some things are bad for us, yet we still do them anyway. If we come to recognise more this Lent the error of our daily actions, and attempt to correct them, we can become closer to God in discipline, with an upright heart; directed not inwardly to ourselves, but outwardly towards our neighbours and towards God.

The second reading from Paul's letter to the Romans also tells us about how Christ justifies us. Adam caused the Fall, yet Christ causes salvation. This popular motif in modern Christian theology has powerful resonance with our humanity. We recognise that we are sinful, yet we know that Christ's sacrifice enabled a way out of our sin, if only we understand and follow him.

The Gospel further illustrates the theme of temptation. Christ's forty days in the wilderness, on which the tradition of Lent is based, talks of the devil repeatedly tempting Christ to renounce God and to renounce holiness, and instead to follow him. Yet how can Christ possibly renounce himself? As God, he had the power to remain true to himself, despite his common humanity with us. He was a man like us, in all things but sin, as orthodox theology states. We therefore cannot expect to deal with temptation quite as stringently as Christ does, but he provides a model for our behaviour, and our conscience is instrumental in acknowledging that we can overcome temptation; with the help of God, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Lent shows us our human frailty and weakness, yet it also shows us the power of our human solidarity with Christ, and has the possibility to open us and renew our relationship with God, if only we keep on his path, and if we stray, we can listen and follows Christ's message as a stepping stone back to the holiness of God.