Tuesday – 6th Week in Ordinary Time – A

So in the first reading from the Epistle of James, we hear in the opening line, “Blessed is he who perseveres in temptation” (Jas 1:12). Now, my brothers and sisters, we're always going to be tempted. This is something that we need to be clear on. A lot of people come to the confessional, in my experience as a priest, and they are anxious and worried because they are tempted all the time and they think something is wrong with them. In fact, something is a little bit wrong with us because we have a fallen human nature. But the temptations — that's not something abnormal. That's something that's always going to be with us.

As the Catechism teaches us, temptation comes from three main sources, and I'd just like to comment on these three before we get into the Gospel very briefly. The first source of temptation is from the very world in which we live now. God created the world and everything in it, and he saw that it was good. But what happened is that man, through his free choices, through his own decisions, took those good things in the world out of context. He distorted their meaning. He distorted their purpose and their function. He mixed up the right order in which everything was created, and hence we get disorder.

And so our temptations will always involve something good that has been taken out of context. So, for example, money: we need money and our finances in order to settle ourselves into a comfortable way of living so that we can praise the Lord without anxiety. But if we take money out of context, if money begins to get a hold of us so that our be-all and end-all of our existence is to generate income, then we've taken money and its purpose out of context.

How about sexuality? God created men and women — men and women who would unite in the sacred bond of matrimony and then express their love, their communication, their trust, their compassion for one another through the sublime act of intimacy. Now, if a man and woman get together for sexual encounters, sexual intimacy out of matrimony — in other words, if they are unmarried — what happens is they've taken sexuality and the purpose for which God gave it to us and created it out of context, and therefore it becomes disordered and it causes all kinds of other effects — psychological, emotional, even physical — that will be detrimental to our souls.

Food. God created food in the world, agriculture, all the beautiful things that make food even taste good — sweetness, salt, all the savoury products that we include when we're cooking. But if we put too much of something into our recipe, or if we eat too much food, then we take it out of context. We're taking it out of its original purpose, the purpose that God gave it when he created food to sustain us so we can be able to live. We eat so as to live. We don't live so as to eat.

It's just like what Jesus says about the Sabbath: “God created the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27). So the first source of temptation is the world.

The second source of temptation is our own fallen human nature, the concupiscence of the flesh. To put it in perspective, this is what Jesus talks about when he says, “Nothing that enters into a man can dirty him; it's what comes out of a man” (Mk 7:15). What is born in the human heart? Thoughts of murder, adultery, envy, deceit, pride. Those are the things that we need to look out for.

And then the third source of temptation: the evil one himself and his fallen angels, the third of angels that followed him into the abyss, who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. And he does this by tempting us to detach ourselves from God — and not only detach ourselves from God, but to mock him by the way we live, by the way we treat others, by the way we make of everything around us, including people, objects for our own selfish gain. This is the devil, and he wants to destroy us. And he does it subtly, and he's a master at doing it.

And so these three sources of temptation are always going to be with us: the world around us, our fallen human nature, the devil. Jesus in today's Gospel is saying to the apostles to beware, “Guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mk 8:15). What is leaven? It's something that grows slowly within the bread — those things that we allow to creep into our souls little by little, in increments, that if they go unchecked, they become the source of not only our corruption, but our downfall.

Just like what happened to many of the Pharisees and to Herod, who allowed himself to be corrupted by power and the world around him, and the evil one, Satan, who is always around.

My brothers and sisters, as we go into Lent, let us ask the Lord to give us the grace to do good battle against the temptations that come to us by praying. How did Jesus deal with temptation? He was always linked, connected to the Father. And so we would be wise to do the same — to always be connected to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And one of the best ways to do this is to always remain close to our Blessed Mother, to pray her Holy Rosary, and to each day delve a little bit deeper into our prayer life.

Be of heart, the Lord is with you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.