In today’s gospel, Satan offers Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world” in exchange for what seems like a pretty simple thing… Jesus just needs to bow down and worship Satan. Now, that obviously seems like a fairly ridiculous thing to us. How could Jesus ever worship Satan? Jesus passes the test, but the real question is, “Do we?”
Worship comes from an old English word related to “worth.” Whatever we find to have the most worth, it becomes worthy, and at the highest degree we worship. Satan tries to get us to do exactly what he tried to get Jesus to do. He wants us to to hold something as having more worth than God, to worship something other than God. This is idolatry.
As we begin Lent, perhaps one of the best exercises we can do is to honestly reflect on what we value, what we find most worthy. Satan will always use some apparent good to entice us, just like he did with Eve in the first reading. But he lies. He hides the true good. He tells Eve she can become like God if she just overthrows God. The truth is that Eve is already like God, and so are you and I. The answer to these challenges from Satan is to do what Jesus did and end the conversation. In short, “Quit talking to the dang snake.”
So where are you chasing goods that aren’t the greatest good? What are you holding onto as having more worth than God? Start this Lent with the question, “What do you worship?”
1 comment
Thank you for these words about the gospel. So simple and yet so hard for us to do.