Stay Awake…!

The Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent is always the story of the Temptation of Jesus. This story is included in the gospel not to show the human side of Jesus rather to teach us how to handle temptations in our life.

Temptation is real. It is all over. Every day we are bombarded with temptations. However, very seldom we are aware of them. Jesus discovered it when he was in the Desert. The Desert is a place of silence and solitude. When Jesus stood before God in silence, he discovered the different pushes and pulls that had the potentials to distract him from his mission.

First of all, to discover and deal with our temptations, we need a desert; a place of silence and time for silence. Since we are distracted with too many things, very often, we become aware of our temptations only when we become a victim of it. Try to find time and place for prayer and personal reflections during this lent. In His light we see our true self.

Secondly, the devil is not tempting us anymore with traditional weapons and materials. They upgraded and modernized its tactics. They trap us today in a very sophisticated way. First of all, they make our lives busy with too many attractive activities and programs. They present these things as vitally important and unavoidable. They convincingly present religion as a private enterprise and make us believe that God and religion can wait. They push God away from the center of our life and make it one among many. This attitude is called secularism.

When God is pushed away from the center of my life, then I become the center of my life. My primary concern becomes the glorification of my self and not of God. This is called individualism. How do we measure glory, greatness and success today? It is in terms of wealth and things that we possess/ have. As a result, the driving force of our life becomes the craving for wealth and everything associated with that. This is called materialism.

The truth is that we are never happy with what we have. Material things seldom give us fulfillment. They get outdated and out fashioned easily. Nothing seems permanent and stable. Evidently, we look for novelty. We try for the latest in the market. This is called consumerism.

The basic principle of consumerism is ‘be different and go for the latest brand’. Eventually consumerism, the ‘use and throw culture’ creep into human relationship and families. People give up relationships for silly reasons and go for new ones. Experimentation in human relationship breaks families and spread chaos in the society which is the ultimate goal of Devil.

In short, secularism leads to individualism, individualism leads to materialism, materialism leads to consumerism and consumerism leads to chaos. This is the way devil operates today!

The devil ensures our fall by pushing God away from the center. The effect may not be immediate though certain. The devil knows how to kill without shedding even a single drop of blood. Many of the world’s most attractive temptations are like some television commercials: frequently deceptive and frightfully costly (William Arthur Ward). Stay awake! Be alert!

Jesus survived the temptations by using the Scripture. Each time he was tempted with other priorities, the Word of God reminded him of God’s plan for him. The best way to recognize, resist and overcome temptation is to turn to the Scripture, Teachings of the Church and its Sacred Traditions.