February 26, 2023 - First Sunday of Lent, Year A

Paul T. Keil , February 26, 2023

The First Sunday of Lent, Year A

Peace be with you on this, our celebration of The Mass for the First Sunday of Lent. Alright, so here we are, four/five days into Lent. How is your spiritual growth going so far? If you’ve been listening to the message from this pulpit for the last couple of weeks you know, personal spiritual growth should be at the heart of these 40 days. In fact, right now might be a good time to contemplate for a few seconds as ask, is what I’m doing so far for Lent helping my spiritual growth? Hopefully the answer is “yes” but if not, now is a great time to reevaluate and perhaps seek a more spiritual path towards Easter. And of course, ultimately, any path we might discover that helps personal spiritual growth should continue right on past Easter and become part of our lives from now on.

So today we’ve just heard Matthew’s version of Jesus’ temptation by the devil in the desert. You know, I’m not sure about you, but over the years there have been a few things that have bothered me about this story. It was probably my engineering mind working but have you ever wondered; who was the eyewitness, who was listening to the exchange between Jesus and Satan to write it down, or how could Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, ever really be tempted by the devil in the first place? Well, as I was sitting in a Catholic University classroom studying Scripture here is how a wise old professor answered my questions: “First, Jesus is, was, and always will be the Son, coeternal with the Father and Holy Spirit, in Trinity. Second, Jesus knew exactly whom he was talking to in the desert that day. Third, this was not a true temptation encounter from a human perspective. It was spiritual joust using Scripture instead of swords. Fourth, there were no eyewitnesses to this encounter between Jesus and the Evil One. And finally, Jesus himself chose to tell this temptation story to his disciples later, specifically to TEACH through divine revelation.” Now my professor’s answer does not constitute Catholic Doctrine per se, and you can certainly choose to ignore it, but personally, I’ve always loved the image of Jesus’ Apostles sitting around the campfire listening to him talk about this first verbal battle with Satan.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all place this story right after Jesus’ baptism and just before his public ministry, obviously a prominent place in the salvation story. So, as we sit here on this First Sunday of Lent, what is the salvation message to take away from this temptation story? Friends, this is where the New Testament really starts teaching us the difference between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. This is where Jesus really begins his journey to Calvary. This is where Jesus begins saying to each and every one of us, “As I, so you. Follow my example. Do as I do.” You’ve often heard me talk about the four great false gods of our modern secular culture; pride, power, pleasure, and wealth, for you engineers that’s P3 + W. Well, it doesn’t take much thought to realize these temptations of Christ in the desert crosswalk neatly into the wisdom of the world portrayed by pride, power, pleasure, and wealth.

Let me ask, have you ever thought about this; as the New Testament starts out with a temptation story, so does the Old Testament? Of course, we all know these two-temptation stories end significantly different. The OT story revolves around that first great “P” word on the false god list – pride. When we hear the serpent tell Eve, “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods.” And, out of pride, I think humanity still struggles, making God-like decisions today, don’t you? When theologians talk about the 7 deadly sins, they always place pride on the top of the list as the most dangerous. Why? My sisters and brothers, pride is the sin that opens the door for us to rationalize almost anything. As modern Americans especially, pride is the sin that allows us to say, “it’s my right,” even when it’s spiritually, ethically, or morally wrong.

In Jesus’ temptation story, Satan offered him everything encompassing worldly pride, power, pleasure, and wealth, and his answer was what? Perhaps when we’re tempted to make a god-like decision ourselves, Jesus’ answer to Satan should be our own, “The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.” Now imagine yourself with Jesus and his Apostles sitting around the campfire as he tells this temptation story and he looks directly at you and asks, “how often do you serve personal pride, or place your own desire for power, pleasure, or wealth ahead of serving God? Out of pride, do you rationalize an ethical or moral decision that you know deep down in your own heart – is wrong. Do you listen to your God or to your ego.”

Now before I wrap up today, let me make one thing perfectly clear; pride, power, pleasure, and wealth are not, in themselves, inherently evil. They are some of the things that make us truly human and separate us from the animals. God doesn’t want us to go through life as miserable unhappy people. Really and truly, pleasure is OK. These very human characteristics only become evil when we, through our own free wills, allow them to become god-like. When we allow them to control our lives. When we put them ahead of the one true God and creator of the universe. As I hear this 2000-year-old temptation story about Jesus and Satan I’m reminded of a quote from C.S. Lewis, which it seems, is even more applicable today, “While Satan is out of style, he is not out of business.”

So, here’s your homework. As you go home today remember to ask yourself, “Is my Lenten practice helping me to grow spiritually.” If the answer is no, you might want to reevaluate. After all, we’re just starting our first full week. The late Father James Gilhooley gave some great advice for Lent. “Call someone who’s lonely and say, ‘I’ll come over.’ Go to confession. Smile more. Read the Bible. Forgive an enemy. Love someone who doesn’t deserve it. Be kinder than necessary. Exercise. Live one day at a time and make it a work of art. Finish Lent as a more interesting Christian.”

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Paul T. Keil, 18-19 July 2026 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Season A Peace be with you and welcome to our celebration of the Mass for the 16 th Sunday in Ordinary Time. OK, some of you may remember I’ve said before, in Matthew’s Gospel, Chapters 5, 6, and 7 comprise the whole Sermon on the Mount, but did you know Chapter 13, where we are today, is often called the Sermon of the Parables. In this single chapter Matthew strings together seven separate parables from Jesus. Today we just heard numbers two, three, and four. Last weekend we heard the first one with the Parable of the Sower and what happens to the seeds scattered in different places. Next weekend you’ll hear the final three parables from Chapter 13 so, be sure to come back. So, what is Jesus saying in these readings. Last week we heard the parable about seeds as an allegory for Jesus’s words falling on a path and being eaten by birds, falling on rocky ground and withering with no roots, falling into thorns and being choked by life’s anxieties, and falling on fertile soil to bear fruit. Today we have Jesus giving us another parable about planting seeds and again, just like last week, Jesus’ disciples ask him to explain the parable. And since He stops to explain both parables about planting, he just might be trying to emphasize something important here for his disciples, and for us. One thing is clear in these parables however, God’s Kingdom will always coexist in this physical world with forces opposing it, like the wheat and the weeds growing together. Now many religious people struggle with this condition. Some see it as predestination. A weed in the wheat field or a seed in the rocks must represent people predestined to go to hell. That’s what it literally says, right? Still others ask in frustration; this is God we’re talking about, why does God’s Kingdom have to struggle with opposing forces at all? Why doesn’t God just get rid of the evil? Well, our old friend, St Thomas Aquinas wrote quite a bit about good and evil coexisting in our fallen world. He said sometimes the two are so tightly interwoven that you couldn’t have certain types of good without certain types of evil. For example, he said simply, “there would be no virtue of the martyr without the cruelty of the tyrant.” Friends, God delights in our freedom, our intelligence, and our cooperation when we freely make the decision to accept God’s love. Without free will we cannot choose to love. Jesus’ explanation of the wheat and weed parable certainly helps when he says; “The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels” and in the next verse he says; “The Son of Man will send his angels.” There is a very important take-away here every single Christian should remember. Eternal judgment belongs to God alone, not to anyone else – period. This is a consistent message Jesus gives us in all four Gospels but unfortunately, there are those who sometimes forget this simple divine fact about humanity’s relationship with the unlimited creator of the universe. We may perceive an individual as being bad or even intrinsically evil but judgment for their immortal souls belongs exclusively to God. I always like an old adage that goes like this, “if I ever get to heaven, I may be surprised by who I see there, and they may be even more surprised to see me.” I’ll admit, over the years for a long time, as I’ve meditated on this parable about weeds and wheat or last week’s parable about seeds, especially the ones falling into thorns choked by worldly anxiety, there was something always bothering me. You see, if we’re not careful both parables can make life, heaven, and hell sound kind of random or worse yet, they can make God’s love sound like it is exclusively reserved for preselected people. I know now however, there is nothing further from the truth. If you’ve lived life for a while and think back to times when you were say maybe,,, struggling in school, or first dating, or trying to make ends meet while raising a family, or competing for promotions at work, or trying to buy that first house, you realize there may have been times when your life wasn’t very spiritually fruitful. In fact, I now realize there were times in my own past when thoughts of God, salvation, or prayer were nowhere in my daily routine. I even wonder; was there a period in my life when I was one of those weeds or a seed in the thorns? Thankfully, with reflection on the whole of Scripture, guidance from the Church, and maybe some help from the Holy Spirit I realize now these parables are not “either / or” propositions. God doesn’t intentionally create some people as weeds and some people as wheat nor does God throw souls into the wind to randomly fall in the thorns, or on stony ground, or in fertile soil. If you’re not careful, you can come to those conclusions, however. You can read the Bible too narrowly and pick out verses here and there that help support your personal image of what you want God to be. Those tend to be the same people who like to do God’s judgment work for him. Here’s the thing; some of us here today may have actually spent some time as those ugly weeds but at some point, with God’s help, we decided to change and now we’re wheat growing in that good old fertile soil. My sisters and brothers, sin must never be viewed as a permanent state. Like we heard from the Book of Wisdom today, “you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.” This is the greatest gift of our Christian faith; God loves us all so much, even great sinners, God is always ready to forgive. So, here’s a challenge and homework for us all today. Most of us know people out there from all age groups, but especially some of our youth, who may be temporarily living life like the weeds in our parable today or maybe tangled in those thorns of life’s tribulations. First and foremost, we must be confident, sin is not a permanent state of life, second, we don’t judge, third, pray for them no matter how nasty they may seem. And finally, if we’re really, really brave, we offer them a hand to pull them up and out of the weeds, rocks, or thorns into God’s fertile soil.