Evil Exists

First Sunday of Lent (YearA)

February 8-9, 2008 Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 17
Romans 5:12-19
17-19Matthew 4:1-11

Temptation...Temptation is something that allures, excites, and seduces someone. Temptation has many form, it exists anywhere at any time (mostly in the kitchen table, even in the church and during Mass). Some people are tempted to leave just before the Mass finished. Temptation by its nature distracts our attention and focus in doing what is right and good and what is pleasing before the eyes of God.

Human as we are, anyone is prone to temptation we lose our attention in doing the will of God. Even the most holiest priest can be tempted.

There was once a young, pious priest waiting for a taxi at a street corner. Suddenly rain started to pour down and the poor priest was getting soaked to the bones. Luckily a car came a long and stopped to offer him a ride. As the priest got in, he found out that the one behind the driver was a young, very attractive lady.

For spiritual protection, the devout priest prayed to himself: “Lord, deliver me from evil.” As they drove on, a freak accident happened causing the car to slide and swerve out of the road falling into a ditch. The car overturned, knocking off the two unconscious.

A few moments later… The young priest regained consciousness, he saw his hand resting on the smooth, tender hand of the lady, of course by accident. Seeing the compromising situation, the pious priest looked up to heaven and prayed: “Lord, thy will be done!”

We do not know the end of the story. Did the priest give in to temptation or not?

Lent begins
The celebration of Ash Wednesday four days ago marked the beginning of Lent. The imposition of ash on our foreheads reminded us of our own mortality in order to help us focus on Christ’s self-sacrifice and more eagerly to celebrate his Resurrection.

Lenten season is a 40-day journey. It's a 40-day of discipline not lose our focus and attention to our Lord who is the destiny of our earthly journey. The purpose of 40 days is to ready us to celebrate Easter with ‘mind and heart renewed’. We begin the first Sunday of Lent with the reading of today’s Gospel – the Temptation of Jesus. Yes, Jesus himself was tempted. Jesus is like us in every way, he was tempted as we are, but always with this one exception: He did not sin. In contrast to Adam and Eve, from the first reading, Jesus remained faithful to God when he was tempted and never lose his focus to obey God, even though it would lead him to the Cross and the Tomb.

Sin
Sin is not a popular topic in our modern culture, but during this time of Lent we are called to face up to its reality in our lives and to the devastating effect it has had on the world around us. Sin always had an effect not in our personal life but also has social implications – it affects our family, children, community…

The logic is this: Temptation leads to sin, sin leads to death. Thus the best way to avoid sin is to prevent temptation as we always pray when we recited the Lord’s pray we say, “Lead us not to temptation but deliver us from evil.”

In our modern culture the greatest temptation we are facing is the attitude that denies existence of evil. The demon’s greatest trick is to make people believe that he does not exist. Evil tells us that sin is not a big deal, everyone does it anyway: it’s ok to swear; it’s ok to commit adultery; it’s ok to abort a fetus it’s not a baby; it’s ok to live together outside marriage it’s common now; it's ok to have sex before marriage; it's to sometimes disobey our parents; it's ok not to pray; it’s ok not to go to confession; it’s ok not to church on Sunday, God is everywhere anyway and I will go to church when I feel like going;

It’s ok to sin. Not a big deal.

But we know it’s not ok to sin. When we sin deep in our heart there is an little voice (conscience) that tells us "something is not right" and guilt confronts us. No matter how hard we justify ourselves we feel it's not ok.

We all know from our personal experience the bad effect of sin, again to our family, loved ones, children, community, even to our economy.

Jesus conquers Sin
Evil exists, it’s a fact. The devil roams around and within us. Yet the most important thing that the Christian faith has to tell us is not that evil exist, but that Christ has defeated evil. Christ is more powerful than the devil. With Christ we have nothing to fear. Nothing and no one can do us ill, unless we ourselves allow it. Satan, said an ancient Father of the Church, after Christ's coming, is like a dog chained up in the barnyard: He can bark and lunge as much as he wants, but if we don't go near him, he cannot harm us.

In the desert Jesus freed himself from Satan to free us! This is the joyous news with which we begin our Lenten journey toward Easter.

Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving
During these 40days of Lent we acknowledge our sinfulness before God. We trust his loving mercy and forgiveness to renew our lives and set us free from our past mistakes and wrong decision.

This week, Archbishop Denis Hart, Archbishop of Melbourne, wrote in his Pastoral Letter for 2008 some guidelines how we make this season of Lenten a meaningful journey. His letter is available for us to read.

He presents us what the Gospel calls us to do during this time of Lent – to pray, fast and almsgiving or works of love.

The archbishop invites us to be faithful in our prayer life most especially the celebration of Mass. We are invited to observe silence in our churches before and after Mass to provide each other with opportunities to reach out to the Lord in prayer. He encourages us also to walk with Jesus during this time of Lent by attending Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Way of the Cross and the Rosary.

Archbishop Hart briefly mentioned the importance of fasting as discipline which enables us to focus our attention to God and the needs of others, rather than our own needs.

Lastly he encourages us Catholics to continue our strong tradition of helping the poor as an expression of our love. He says, We who live in a land of plenty are given the opportunity to think of others who lack the abundance that we have. Each year we contribute financial help to alleviate the poor through Project Compassion.

The core of almsgiving is love and justice. We donate something to the poor not because we are rich and they are poor. We do not give because of pity but we give, we help, not merely because they poor but because they are our brothers and sisters, and we love them.

Conclusion
We pray as one family that together we make this Lenten season an opportunity to overcome temptation, an opportunity to say sorry for the many times gave in to temptation, an opportunity of renewal and growth and a real pilgrimage that we may reach the destiny of our journey, no other than our Resurrected Lord. Amen.