Monsignor Enrique Díaz Díaz shares with Exaudi readers his reflection on the Gospel of this Sunday, March 9, 2025, entitled: “Temptations.”

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Deut. 26, 4-10: “Profession of faith of the chosen people”

Psalm 90: “You are my God and I trust in you”

Romans 10, 8-13: “Profession of faith of those who believe in Jesus Christ”

St. Luke 4, 1-13: “The Spirit led Jesus into the desert, and there the devil tempted him”

Pope Francis tells us that with the penitential sign of ashes on our heads, we begin the annual pilgrimage of holy Lent in faith and hope. The Church, mother, and teacher, invites us to prepare our hearts and open ourselves to the grace of God in order to celebrate with great joy the paschal triumph of Christ, the Lord, over sin and death. What are the temptations of modern man? They will be the same as always: to forget God and to seek our way.

The “temptations” of Jesus, which Saint Luke symbolically narrates, contain within themselves the fundamental aspects of idolatry: the rivals of God, prohibited by the first commandment; and the manipulation of the Lord, condemned by the second. Perhaps it seems out of time and out of place to speak of idolatry. But if we think more deeply we will see that whoever denies God, carves for himself an image of a new idol and thus man always bows, if not before God, then before the many idols that he has created and to which he has enslaved himself: money, power, the state, pleasure, capital, his own person, etc. Idolatry is becoming a very current sin, because man, forgetting God, with various manipulations, makes himself the only center and rejects God or turns him into an amulet at the service of man. There will always be the double danger that new rivals of God will arise or that we will try to lower him to the category of idol.

“Everything will be yours.” The messages of the prophets show that the fundamental attitude that deifies the goods of this world is greed, in the most varied forms and expressed in different attitudes. There is greed that does not respect the dignity or the life of one’s neighbor and presents itself as a direct injustice. Man gives in to the fascination of riches and justifies his actions in order to have more. Oppressing, stealing, defrauding, condemning, piling houses upon houses, fields upon fields, enslaving the poor, children, women; Artificially increasing the prices of products, using rigged scales, and a long series of tricks, all are justified by the ambition to have more and add injustice upon injustice. And the saddest thing is that the heart that gives itself over to this idolatry does not realize it, everything seems justifiable. Greed creeps into the heart of man without him noticing and leaves him empty, dry, without feelings. Only then can we understand that one can be capable of preferring money to the lives of the innocent, that one hides food even if the hungry die in order to have a few more dollars, that one pays miserable wages and squeezes the worker to obtain better profits. Undoubtedly there are sins of nations and of large companies, but no one is exempt from this temptation, and we all have to review our attitude towards money and ambition. How is my heart towards money? Have I despised the dignity of any person or my own dignity for money? Only in God does man find his true value and recognition.

“Let it become bread.” Perhaps more subtly, this temptation seems to be not a direct injustice but an indirect one: selfishness. That I satisfy my hunger, that I have the right to the goods that I consider justly obtained, that I enjoy myself, that I can give myself to the high life without worrying about the disaster of my poor fellow citizens, seems legitimate and even desirable. But all people who live like this, even if they do not steal or kill, are also worshiping wealth. They do so with their luxury and waste, they consider their comforts the only important thing, and they put full trust in the idol that provides them. We can all be seduced by this greed that sneaks through the cracks of the desire for well-being and the justification of a private property that ends up renouncing one’s brother and enslaving him to offer him to the god of wealth. It is the modern world’s offering to comfort, progress and fashion. This temptation ends up penetrating the hearts of the poorest and manifests itself in the anguish and distress caused by the lack of goods. It is the desire to have more, to secure food, drink and clothing, to have certainty for tomorrow, and to become a slave to riches. It is looking at money as the only solution. It is the justification of pleasure and possessions, saying that we are not harming anyone. It is putting ourselves as the only reason, but then where is God?

“Let not your feet stumble.” The manipulation of God is also a very current form of idolatry, although perhaps less conscious. We put God on our side and seek to justify our barbarities, from a war to bring peace, to the discrimination of those who do not believe as we do. We feel “good” and believe ourselves protected by God, we manipulate him with our worship and our prayers, but we do not seek his will and we do not understand that man only finds himself when he fully surrenders himself into the hands of God. It is the religion of prosperity and of those who seek to be happy without taking into account God or their brother.

Today, the first Sunday of Lent, Christ with his response to these temptations invites us to recognize ourselves as creatures of God, loved by Him, sustained by his creative force. Conversion is changing the center of our life, leaving selfishness and greed aside and putting God as the only center. To convert is to discover that happiness is not found in pleasure or in possessions, but in the recognition that we belong to God and that the love shared with our brothers is our destiny and happiness. Christ, in his temptations, teaches us how to live in total surrender to the will of God.

Grant us, almighty God, that our Lent may be a true desert where we find ourselves, where we discover the immensity of your love and where we understand that true conversion comes through the encounter with the poorest and most helpless brother. Amen.