Homily: First Sunday in Lent
February 22, 2026
Dear brothers and sisters, we have entered another season of Lent. The Lenten season is a special season that Christians draw closer to God through prayers, through the practice of almsgiving and in the practice of self-control through fasting. We can say that the 40 days of Lent loosely corresponds to the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness to fast and pray before He began His public ministry. The spiritual experiences in the wilderness and constant communication with His Father made Jesus to be fully equipped for His ministry. The outcome became that no matter how deceptive and shrewd the Evil One became at tempting Him, He was able to quickly tell the Evil One, get behind me Satan. In the season of Lent, we are called to imitate Jesus’ wilderness spiritual moments and spiritual experiences.
In the gospel reading of today, we are presented with the account of the temptations that Jesus encountered from the hands of the Evil One in this wilderness journey. This Jesus’ temptation in the gospel is placed side by side with the temptations of our first parents Adam and Eve at the garden of Eden in the first reading of today so that we can compare and contrast and draw the moral lessons for ourselves for our own spiritual growth seeing how Jesus conquered the Evil One and how the Evil One conquered Adam and Eve.
When we compare and contrast the two episodes of temptation, one thing that quickly stands out is the dangerous promises of the Evil One. Satan will always come to promise us heaven and earth and make us understand that our conformity to moral norms, our obedience to the commandments of God is slavery, bondage and lack of freedom. You see how he told Adam and Eve that God knows that when they eat this fruit, they will be like God knowing good and evil. You see how he told Jesus, everything in the world will be yours if you compromise a little from going to through the way of the cross and taking the way of the world.
Unfortunately, Satan has never rested till today. He keeps coming to us to give us seemingly fantastic and alluring promises of happiness, pleasure, freedom, contentment, security, power, if we jettison God’s ways and maneuver and manipulate our way through following the path of the world. Brothers and sisters, we need to beware of the empty promises of the Evil One. When Adam and Eve ate the Forbidden fruit, they never became like God as Satan promised them, instead their rejection of God’s word brought with it the collapse of their harmonious relationship with God, their fellow human beings and with Nature itself because their sin introduced evil and suffering and ecological devastation of the world. Our present-day rejection of God’s word continues to introduce the same kind of evil in our life and in the world of our time.
Another point that stands out in these two episodes is the preparedness of the Evil One. Let us not think that the force of the Evil One is so weak, that once we yell at him, Satan will take to flight. The apparatus, trickery, readiness, wisdom, perseverance of the Evil One are not to be undermined. For instance, the fruit he showed Adam and Eve was really for the knowledge of good and evil and delicious in the eyes. So, it was easy to track them down. Satan knew Jesus is God, so he sought to puncture his divinity. Jesus had the powers to do all those deeds and even more, but what for? Is it for Jesus to start competing with worldly magicians and power mongers. You see how Satan backed himself up with scriptural quotations, in order to convince Jesus that even the bible supports His going the way of the world. Even after that, he never left Jesus, he came again in Peter to tempt him, came to tempt Him again at Golgotha before His crucifixion.
Brothers and sisters, we must be aware of this preparedness of the Evil One to pull us down. That is why giving him a single chance in our life is a pathway to disaster. One mistake of Adam and Eve is that they started dining and wining with the Evil One on one plate. A person who likes pizza but is asked to abstain from pizza for health reasons cannot accompany a friend to a pizzeria just for friendly discussions, the endpoint may be terrible, taking some sweet bites of pizza. We cannot be dining and wining with evil decisions. We must flee from the Evil One by going nearer to God. Jesus shows us the way through His 40 days Lenten experience in the wilderness. May we follow after Him by coming closer to God in this Lenten season through prayers, self-control and other charitable acts.
