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Year C

- 1st Sunday of Lent

You shalt not tempt the Lord your God.

Luke 4:1-13

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness,
2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.
3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread."
4 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.' "
5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.
6 And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.
7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours."
8 Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.' "
9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here,
10 for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,'
11 and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.' "
12 Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.' "
13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. (NRSV)

Inspiration of the Holy Spirit - From the Sacred Heart of Jesus

1st Sunday of Lent - You shalt not tempt the Lord your God.

I am the Eternal Word, the Son of God. In my spiritual nature I am pure Spirit. I am also the Son of Mary, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of my Virgin Mother, therefore I have shared human nature and for the sake of your salvation I became a man.

As a man I shared all the weaknesses and temptations of human beings. After my baptism, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and decided to prepare myself for the work I was going to do. I went to the desert to fast and to pray for my mission. Right at the end when I was at my weakest human point the devil appeared to me trying to seduce me with his temptations.

I represented the whole human race in my spiritual struggle with the powerful enemy of souls so that you all would learn a lesson and always draw your wisdom and strength from me. The three enemies of the soul are the flesh, the world and the devil. He tempted me as he tempts everyone but I overcame his temptations. You can also overcome the same way I did.

To the weakness of the flesh, the devil tempted me with bread in order to interrupt my self-denial, my reply to him was “Human beings live not on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” I have taught you everything you need to know, my word will be your wisdom and your strength. Deny yourselves and you will have total self-control against temptation.

The devil tempted me to worship him in exchange for power, glory and riches, I said to Him “You must do homage to the Lord, Him alone must you serve” The first commandment calls to worship God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, but many people neglect God and worship the false gods of the world, therefore becoming victims of the devil.

The devil tempted me to throw myself from a pinnacle of the temple, to which, I replied, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God”. Every time you sin, you are doing just that. You are forgetting the damage you are doing to your soul, you are putting the Lord to the test. Therefore don’t put me to the test, avoid sin, do what is good and you will conquer temptations when they come.

Author: Joseph of Jesus and Mary

Catholic Culture

Daily Readings for: February 17, 2013
(Readings on USCCB website)

Collect: Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observances of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

RECIPES

Pease Porridge

ACTIVITIES

The Kaleidoscope of Lent

PRAYERS

Lent: February 17th

First Sunday of Lent

Old Calendar: First Sunday of Lent

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." And Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone." And the devil took him up. and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours." And Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve."

Stational Church

Sunday Readings
The first reading is from Deuteronomy 26: 4-10. In these verses we have the ritual prescribed by Moses for the feast of the harvest thanksgiving. The people once settled in the Promised Land are to show their gratitude to the good God who brought them out of the slavery of Egypt and gave them this good land to be their home.

The second reading is from St. Paul to the Romans 10: 8-13. He is discussing the sad fact that Israel (as a whole) rejected Christ as the promised Messiah and the Son of God.

The Gospel is from St. Luke 5:1-11. Christ's voluntary self-mortification of forty days' fast, with its accompanying temptations, was but part of the self-mortification, with its climax on the Cross, which He gladly underwent for our salvation. He did not need to fast in order to keep the inclinations of the body in subjection, He did not need to allow the insult of temptation. He could have said, "begone Satan" at the beginning as easily and as effectively as be said it at the end. But He willingly underwent this humiliation in order to set us an example and to prove to us the infinite love He bears us and the value, the priceless value, He sets on our eternal salvation. He became like us in all things (except sin) in order to make it possible for us to become like Him—the beloved of his Father—and co-heirs with Him in the kingdom of heaven.

With this example given us by Christ no Christian can or should expect to travel the road to heaven without meeting obstacles and temptations. Our weak human nature is of itself, even without any external tempter, a source of many temptations to us, especially of those three illustrated in the case of Christ. Our body desires all the pleasures and comforts that can be got out of life and resents any curtailment of these desires even on the part of our Creator and Benefactor. Our gifts of intelligence and free-will often tempt most of us to look for power, political or economic, over our fellowmen. We want to be better off than others in this world, when our purpose in life is to help ourselves and our fellowmen to the better life. Finally. so fully occupied are many in the mad rush after pleasure and power that they have no time to devote to the one thing that matters, the attainment of eternal life.

Yet, through some foolish logic of our own, we expect God to do for us what we refuse to do for ourselves. We are tempting God by presuming he will save us if we have deliberately chosen the road to perdition.

There are few, if any, amongst us who can honestly say: "I am free from such inclinations or temptations." The vast majority of us can and should beat our breasts and say with the publican: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner." And merciful he will be if we turn to him with true humility. He may not remove all our temptations, all our wrong inclinations, but he will give us the grace to overcome them if we sincerely seek his aid.

Excerpted from The Sunday Readings by Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M.

The Station today is at St. John Lateran. The Lateran is comprised of the Basilica, the Pontifical Palace and the Baptistry. The church is dedicated to the Christ the Savior. In the fifth century the titles of St. John Baptist and St. John the Evangelist were added. The Papal altar contains the wooden altar on which St. Peter is said to have celebrated Mass. This basilica is the mother of all churches and is the only church which has the title of Archbasilica.