First Sunday of Lent: Jesus in the desert

On this first Sunday of Lent, Luke presents us with the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert. Why did Jesus take the path to the desert?

Jesus came to save souls, and there are none in the desert. It is a place of profound solitude. Company eases pain and weakens it, whereas solitude reinforces it, intensifies it, and makes it harsher. Jesus went to the desert to experience in his Humanity all the harshness of isolation that the Divine Will had endured for centuries at the hands of creatures. By taking upon himself the painful separation between man and God, he sought to reunite mankind with the embrace of their Creator.

But this was not the only reason for his departure into the desert.

When forming Creation, the Creator established that every place should be inhabited and populated, and that the earth should be extremely fertile and rich with many plants so that all could live in abundance (Genesis 2:4-17). By sinning, man provoked divine justice, and the earth remained barren, infertile, and desolate in many places. Just as the sky is filled with stars, the earth was meant to echo the heavens, crowded with inhabitants and abundant in resources to make them all rich and happy. But when man disobeyed God and withdrew from His Will, his fate changed (Genesis 3:9-24).

Jesus went to the desert to recall the blessings of his Heavenly Father and, by invoking the reign of His Will, to restore the earth, making it more fertile and radiantly beautiful. Every act of Jesus had a redemptive value for us.

In the Gospel of this first Sunday of Lent, Satan presents himself to Jesus with an apparently friendly exterior. If we remain attentive and, above all, spiritually connected to God, we will recognize and combat the devil’s traps. But if we are inattentive to the divine, separated from Him by the carnal tendencies that overwhelm us and make us deaf to His voice, we will inevitably succumb to temptation. Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit into the desert to pray and fast for 40 days, invites us to prayer, which unites us with God and gives us strength and clarity to perceive the devil’s traps disguised as harmless appearances.

Indeed, the two most common paths Satan takes to reach souls are through carnal desires and gluttony. He always begins with the material side of human nature.

After dismantling and enslaving it, he directs his attack towards the higher part: first the moral side—thoughts filled with pride and covetousness—then the spirit, stripping it not only of love but also of the fear of God. Divine love ceases to exist when man replaces it with other human loves. At this point, man abandons himself, body and soul, to Satan, becoming ever more attached to the pleasures he pursues.

To the devil’s insinuations, Jesus responds with silence and prayer. He only replies to Satan when he suggests that Jesus is like God, using God’s word as his response. Satan cannot endure it. If the devil seeks to seduce us, we must endure his presence without impatience or fear but react firmly against him and resist his temptations through prayer.

It is useless to argue with Satan because he is skilled in his dialectic. Only God can defeat him. Therefore, we must turn to God, who speaks through us and within us.

We must have the will to overcome Satan, faith in God and His help, faith in the power of prayer, and trust in the Lord’s goodness. Then, Satan will have no power to harm us.

Blessed be God, now and forever!