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When you woke up this morning, was the first thing you thought, “Wow, I would love a piece of cherry pie!” Most likely, you did not have that as your first thought. But I bet you do now, right?
What changed since you woke up and now? Well, what changed is that you saw a picture of a piece of pie. And if you are like me, you’re dying for a piece of cherry pie right now! You have experienced temptation, and temptation is always the theme of the First Sunday of Lent.
In the Gospel of Matthew that we have today (4: 1-11), we hear a tale of the devil tempting Jesus with three things: food, power, and riches. Jesus, of course, did not fall for the devil’s temptations.
The moral of the story is that like Jesus, we should also fight against things that would harm us. We need to remember, though, that things such as food, power, and riches are not intrinsically evil. What is evil is when we use them incorrectly.
The other moral of the story is that temptation is enticing. We need some extra help in combatting it. That is where virtue and prayer come in. Virtue, remember, is a habit that we develop by practice, and prayer is talking with God. So, if we have practiced keeping silent when we could share some gossip, it will be easier to do in the future. And if we are used to asking God for help on our life journey, we will more likely feel comfortable doing so when we’re tempted to do things that would be bad for us.
So, as we go through Lent, it would be a good idea to pay attention to things that tempt us but that would be harmful to us in the long run.
