Saint Rita Catholic Church and School in Webster, NY - An Introduction to Sunday's Scripture Readings

“The Lord, Your God, Shall You Worship And Him Alone Shall You Serve”

Lent is a time to prepare our hearts for the Easter Triduum. It is a time to remind ourselves of all that Jesus endured and accomplished to bring us the grace of salvation. For the next six Sundays during Lent, our Gospel readings will help orient us to the Passion of Christ and His Resurrection. The Old Testament readings will help us explore salvation history and our Epistle readings will support the theme of the Gospel.

In this first Sunday of Lent, the Church asks us unite with Jesus in His 40 days in the desert by offering prayer, fasting, and giving alms. In so doing, we focus our attention on renewing our relationship with God.

In our first reading (Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7), we hear of the creation story of Adam and Eve and then their great fall to Original Sin, giving in to the temptations of Satan by failing to trust God completely. They chose, instead, “to be like gods who know what is good and what is evil." They desired the pleasure of eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, possessing its beauty and the pride of gaining the wisdom of God.

In our Epistle reading (Romans 5:12-19), St. Paul explains how the effects of Adam and Eve's original sin were undone by the righteous act of Jesus in rejecting the Devil's empty promises and trusting completely in the Father. “For if, by the transgression of the one, death came to reign through that one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.”

In our Gospel reading (Matthew 4:1-11) we hear how Jesus was tempted three times by Satan in the desert and each time, Satan was rejected and overpowered by Jesus. We see a very human Jesus, weak and hungry from fasting in the desert. But these temptations are, in a sense, a "do-over" of the first temptations of Adam and Eve, with a completely different result. Jesus, the “new Adam”, has accomplished what the “first Adam” did not—complete trust in God and rejection of sin.

Our readings today remind us of what a slippery slope one sin can put us on and how the only response is trust in God completely and choose God.

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022226.cfm