Not By Bread Alone
Homily for March 9, 2025, First Sunday of Lent
We’re about five days into Lent now; how’s everybody doing?
This past Ash Wednesday I noticed something, going about an ordinary Wednesday while fasting. I was heading into the office around mid-day, feeling hungrier than usual – that can happen on a day of fasting.
And somewhere in the deep, instinctive, subconscious part of my brain came the suggestion that I ought to stop off along the way to pick up a bag of chips or something for an afternoon snack. Any other day I’d probably just do it without a second thought. Feeling a bit peckish, pick up a snack.
Which, of course, is that first temptation which the devil offers Christ, isn’t it? If you’re hungry, eat something. Why deprive yourself?
It’s a common-sense kind of temptation. We can imagine anyone not accustomed to our Catholic penitential practices – maybe even some who are – asking, what’s the point? How does giving up something bring me closer to God?
The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t. Not by itself. But it can remind me to draw closer to God. It breaks that automatic, unconscious mindset of hungry … eat, it gives a momentary pause, a chance to reflect One does not live on bread alone. There is more to life than simply satisfying the urges of the moment.
Which is where the second temptation comes into play – the temptation that all the power, glory, and kingdoms of the world might exist to serve only me.
Once again, it’s an easy mindset to fall into. Each of us is the center of our own life, the main character in our own narrative. But too often, the world around us has a way of not looking after my own convenience. Wouldn’t it be nice to just have the power and the authority to make everyone do what I want them to do?
This kind of thinking generally starts when we’re toddlers and leads to tantrums whenever life inconveniences us. Most of us will eventually grow out of the tantrum phase, but the mindset can be more difficult to shake.
Most of our life these days, most of our culture, is built upon the idea that I can pay someone to make my life easier, to do the things I can’t be bothered to do for myself. But that kind of lifestyle takes money – enough money at least to pay those who will do my work for me. But Scripture reminds us that we can’t serve two masters. If we’re focused on having enough money for these conveniences in life we lose our focus on God.
And so the third temptation is to look to God to take over that role. We look to God to affirm that I am in fact the main character in my own narrative and He should conform everything to my own benefit. But that’s not how it works.
These temptations of the devil are very personal, very individualized. It’s all about my needs, my wants, my conveniences. But Jesus doesn’t answer the devil on his own terms. He doesn’t respond with here’s what I think about that. No, Jesus responds with, here’s what Scripture says about that. Jesus responds from the Word of God and from Sacred Tradition.
God does call each of us into a personal relationship. And these days of Lent are a time when we can work on deepening and strengthening that relationship. But God also calls us into community. He calls us to community, and to a Tradition which is just a community spread throughout time.
Our first reading from Deuteronomy reminds us that as we bring our individual offerings before God, we do it in communion with those around us. God saves us as a people – not just individually, but collectively.
He calls us together as a people, as a community, as the Body of Christ, as Church, to serve one another. To do unto others as we would have them do unto us – to bring about for them the conveniences we would wish for ourselves. And Lent, with its focus on Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving, reminds us of this necessity.