First Sunday of Lent - 2026

By Sr. Rachel Bergschneider

I don’t know about you, but I find the story of Jesus’ temptations almost beyond any experience to which I can relate. I have always wondered how Jesus’ could fast 40 days and 40 nights. Since we know that the experience of the Israelites in the desert for forty days related to us in the Book of Deuteronomy is the framework and bedrock of Jesus’ desert story, we can see why this story was written.

Rather than a literal description of a desert experience, Scripture scholars now view this story with the understanding that “supplies readers with important ‘insider’ information about Jesus that none of the human characters in the body of the gospel possess.” (Donahue) Mark, in particular, was interested in “engaging readers in the unfolding story of Jesus so that we may be caught up by his message.” And that message, in short, was the powerful message of Jesus’ relationship with the Father. Having just been baptized, Jesus has an awakening awareness of who He is, of discovering himself as a beloved Son of God: God is his father! He is filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is ultimately touched by these words of intimacy with the Father. From now on Jesus uses the word Abba to speak to the Father. That one word Abba, says it all: his total trust and his unconditional availability to his Father. His is absolute faith. Nothing and no one can distract him from that path. This is the inner presence that motivates everything Jesus does and says.

Christian sources, writing the temptation story some 70 years later, were relying and bringing to the reader more than a particular event in Jesus’ life. Mark, as Matthew and Luke, were presenting a classic story “evoking the climate of testing and difficulty in which Jesus lived out his faithfulness to the Father.” The temptations presented to Jesus are not just moral temptations. They go deeper than that: the crisis tests Jesus’ fundamental attitude toward God. How will he live out his task: by seeking his own interest or faithfully listening to God’s word. How will he act: by dominating others, or serving them; will He seek glory for himself or do God’s will? The story of the Temptations is meant to tell the experience of the entirety of Jesus’ struggles and choices made in faithfulness to

the Father. And He did this by taking time alone with the Father very often in His life.

So, if we are to understand the story of the Temptations as Jesus’ lifelong search and decisions to remain faithful, we, too, are confronted with the same dilemma-- our relationship with God. Do I seek my interest or listen to the voice of God; do I find myself dominating others or truly focusing on and paying attention to them in service; do I subtly seek glory for myself or empty myself of my needs and desires to do God’s will? It is easy to play tricks on ourselves. Recently I was talking to someone who was convinced that the will of God had been present in a situation all the while relating that her prayers were the reason the good outcome had taken place.

The choices are daily, not just at the beginning of Lent. Each day the challenge is to focus on the possibility of temptations that may come our way and redirect our commitment to be totally faithful to God.

May the desert we enter in the same way as Jesus stood alone with the Father be the ground that allows us to listen to God in the way that Jesus chose to do!