At the start of every Lenten Season, on the First Sunday of Lent, the Church, in her wisdom, always gives us the account of our Lord's Temptation in the Desert for our consideration and reflection. The temptations that Christ suffered in the desert for forty days at the start of His public ministry were not His first temptations, nor would they be the last temptation of Christ. In St. Luke's account of the Temptation, which we are given this year, we read: When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him for a time. That next "time" would be in Christ's Passion and Death, when our Lord would be tempted to flee the suffering and the pain.

Oftentimes, when we speak of being tempted, of our own experience of temptation, we speak of the struggle with our desire for something pleasurable: be it another human being, a piece of chocolate cake, or a large sum of money. The struggle arises when we realize that other factors must be taken into consideration; that our lives consist of more than just the accumulation of pleasurable experiences.

However, that is a very limited, restricted notion of what it means to undergo temptation. That is not the type of temptation our Lord experienced during His forty days in the desert. Such a limited notion of temptation depicts the world and our lives as a place filled with beautiful, desirable objects, pleasant to the senses, but to each of these beautiful objects, someone has cruelly affixed big signs that read, "DON'T TOUCH!" No, our human experience of temptation goes far beyond that, and certainly, what our Lord suffered in the desert was much more subtle...and of far greater consequence.

The most fundamental human temptation is to direct anything to some other end than the one God intends for it. That bears repeating: our most basic temptation is to direct anything to some other end than the one God intends for it. What do I mean by that? That for us men and women, persons created in the image and likeness of God, our most fundamental temptation, in every sort of circumstance, is to cut God out of the picture, to remove God as the end point, the goal of all our human striving, and to put ourselves, or someone else, or even something else, like an idea or a belief, in God's place.

That was the temptation the Angel Lucifer gave into. He was the most beautiful, the most glorious, the most God-like of the angels, yet he wanted to claim the glory for himself; he wanted to receive the praise and adoration that belong by right to God alone. And in trying to usurp God's rightful place, he fell from being "the bearer of Light" (which the name Lucifer means) to being the Prince of Darkness. He turned from being a Friend of God to being the sworn enemy of God and of all that belongs to God. And in the account of our Lord's Temptation in the Desert, we hear how he went about trying to trip up, not an angel of God, but the very Son of God Himself, who had come into this world to put an end to his reign of terror.

The temptation to cut God out of the picture was the temptation that our first parents gave into, as well. They did not want to be subject to God's commands; they wanted to determine for themselves what was good and what was evil. They were not satisfied with being creatures; they wanted to set themselves on par with the Creator. And in so doing, they lost their friendship with God; they lost the unity between Creator and creature that was meant to be; and they even lost the unity, the harmony that was meant to exist between the two of them. This is symbolized by their sudden realization of their nakedness and their need to clothe themselves.

And we can see that this was precisely the way Satan went about tempting our Lord in the desert. He tried to get Jesus to satisfy His hunger in a miraculous way, by turning stones into bread, but Jesus immediately brought God His Father back into the picture: "It is written, One does not live on bread alone." Then, the Devil tried to tempt Jesus with offers of earthly wealth and power and glory if He would worship him and honor him. Once again, Jesus brings God back into the picture: "You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve." Finally, Lucifer threatened our Lord with bodily harm and reminded Him of His ability to save Himself from it should He so choose, but Jesus rebuked him: "You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test."

Our Lord successfully resisted the temptation to cut God out of the picture. He knew that He had come into this world for one reason alone, and that was to do the will of the One who sent Him, the will of His Father in heaven. His obedience to that will, an obedience even unto death, has restored us to the friendship, the harmony between ourselves and our Creator. And the grace that comes to us through His supreme act of obedience, His Passion and Death, is the only true foundation for the harmony that must exist among ourselves, the only real source of the love for our brothers and sisters.

To get back, for a moment, to the temptation we experience with our desire for a beautiful person, or a tasty morsel, or for easy wealth, that I mentioned at the beginning: the struggle is not between the options "Touch" or "Don't touch!" No, the real struggle is with how we are going to touch. Are we reaching out just to satisfy ourselves, to use people, and things, and wealth to achieve our own selfish ends? Or are we stretching out our hands in gratitude to a loving God, the Source of all that is beautiful, the Giver of all good things?

Can we see Him in everything we desire, and can we desire Him in everything?