Today’s liturgy presents us with the temptations that Our Lord suffered in the desert. There is a parallel between these temptations and the war that exists within the Church. We are invited to defend it with all our strength.
Newsroom (19:36 , Gaudium Press) First Sunday of Lent. A time full of gravity that prepares us – through prayer and mortification – for the Easter feasts. But we cannot say that this is just any old Lent. To the careful observer of world events it is clear that “Ordinary Time” has come to an end, not only liturgically, but also historically. In fact, for some years now we have not been living “Ordinary Time”… However, now, on top of a terrible pandemic, we are beginning to experience a very fearful world tension which, by its worsening, could change the course of our history.
Faced with such a situation, many doubts hang over us in these turbulent times. Why a war now? What is behind it? Will it turn into a world war? Will the nations we live in be affected? Will the effects of this war reach my home, my relatives?
Who is able to answer these questions and give us the solution to these problems?
The only one who has the strength and power to give us the right solution is the Holy Church!
The meeting of two generals
Today’s liturgy rightly presents us with an irreconcilable war. Two generals meet: Our Lord Jesus Christ, Supreme Victor, and the devil, eternally defeated.
At that time, Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, returned to the Jordan, and in the desert he was led by the Spirit. There he was tempted by the devil for forty days. (Lk 4:1-2)
As we know, Our Lord’s main reason for becoming incarnate was for our redemption. But in becoming man the Divine Word also gave us the example of the holiness and perfection that should mark all our actions. We need examples! If God gave us the Commandments without someone to fulfill them perfectly, what difficulties would men have in reaching Heaven? For this reason, the Divine Master even suffered the pains of temptations in order to show us how to overcome them.
If even He – the God-Man – was tempted, why shouldn’t we be? Even the saints are beset by temptations: “This is why Christ wanted to be tempted after his Baptism, as Hilary says, because ‘the devil’s temptations chiefly assail those who are sanctified, for he [the devil] above all wishes to triumph over the saints’.”[1]
Moreover, Our Lord wished to be tempted so that, “by his temptations he might overcome ours, just as by his death he overcame ours.”[2] It is through his merits that the strength comes to us to resist the solicitations of evil. Jesus triumphed over the devil; now it is up to us to continue this battle, defeating the infernal enemy and defending Holy Church, which is suffering terribly from the effects of the worst war there can be.
Attacks against the mission of the Church
The Church is facing an alarming war, and for it we, the faithful, must fight with all our strength. Now, what does this war consist of?
There is a parallel between the temptations which Our Lord suffered in the desert and this war within the Church. The devil seeks to lose her, tries to prevent her from fulfilling her mission. These assaults of the infernal enemy do not last only for forty days or even forty years, but for centuries. He has been trying to penetrate the virginal and most sacred womb of the Holy and Immaculate Church of God.
We can summarize the great mission of the Mystical Body of Christ in three main aspects: Teaching, Government and Sanctification. It is against these three pillars that the devil has concentrated his heavy artillery.
In the desert, Satan told Our Lord to turn the stones into bread (cf. Lk 4:3). He renews this temptation every day by proposing that the Church seek only human solutions to current problems and that she does not transmit the Truth as she should. It is an attack on the mission of Teaching.
The devil wanted Our Lord to throw Himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple (Cf. Lk 4,9). He does not cease to inspire demagogic forces that do not indicate the direction of events and, above all, do not lead to the fulfilment of God’s will. Thus he seeks to prevent the Church from fulfilling her mission to govern.
Finally, Our Lord was tempted to worship the devil and to have all the kingdoms of the world (cf. Lk 4:6-7). This is what happens when one seeks a false peace, a pseudo-fraternity, where there is no longer truth and error, beautiful and ugly, good and evil, but everything is permitted. It is something that goes against the mission of sanctification that the Church possesses.
The attack against the Mystical Spouse of Christ is continuous, terrible, ongoing and ferocious!
Army to which we must all enlist
This is the great war we are living! War in which the devil wants to make Holy Church deny her own mission.
To this struggle we are all called, for it is our duty to love the Church as Our Lord Jesus Christ wanted her. We must fight for Her against her enemies and love Her as She is, and not as the devil seeks to present Her, or as the world wants to represent Her.
By winning this internal battle, peace in the world is only a consequence.
By Lucas Resende
[1] SAINT THOMAS DE AQUINAS. Summa Theologica. III, q. 41, a. 1, ad 2.
[2] Saint Gregory the Great
