Here’s a question to ponder: Who in our life frustrates us? If we can answer this and related questions, we’ll see that the Holy Spirit is trying to set us free. Who in our family, at work, among friends, or in this parish frustrates us? Another question: Is there anyone about whom we worry too much?
Today, we’re focused on false gods as opposed to worshipping the true God. One reason we may be frustrated with people is because we give them too much mental and emotional attention; subconsciously we expect them to make us happy. But only God can do that. Or we’re so worried about someone’s health or life that it’s consuming us and we’re exhausted—their health is becoming more important to us than Jesus. There are degrees to this, but the more someone takes the place of God in our lives, the more we’ve made them a false god.
Now that we’ve begun the holy season of Lent, we’re imitating today’s Gospel: 40 days of purification: “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished” (Mt 4:1-2). Right after Jesus’ Baptism, the Holy Spirit leads Him into a battle, where He will experience the same temptations we experience—as our saviour, He has to experience what we experience so that He can overcome it, and then overcome it in our lives.
Let’s focus on the third temptation: “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him”’” (4:8-10). It’s a question of worship. The devil is offering Jesus something good on condition that He worship the devil. He’s offering Jesus all people on earth—isn’t this who Jesus is supposed to be, the one who gathers humanity? In the same way, the devil takes our family, friendships, and says, ‘These people are good, aren’t they? Focus on them.’ As long as we focus on them and have less attention on Jesus, he’s happy.
Think about how this plays out: We love our family, but if we disagree with the way they’re living or they’re making mistakes and that’s all we think about, it makes us miserable—something good is being twisted. St. Monica prayed that her son would come back to Jesus and she cried over him, but she never loved Augustine more than Jesus. We priests sometimes get consumed in caring for parishioners and our prayer life suffers, and then, at the same time, we get more frustrated with you!
The theologian Christopher West says: What we idolize, eventually we despise. If we idolize our children and make their success the focus of our energies, eventually they disappoint us; they can’t live up to our expectations.
Something similar can happen in dating. We see someone’s good qualities and that’s attractive. But we start thinking about them all the time; we might cross the line into thoughts of lust, etc. Then years later, we experience a pain and disappointment that Jesus doesn’t want us to experience. We used to be so ‘into that person’ but now we’re arguing more and more.
The beautiful part is: The Holy Spirit wants to set us free! He wants great relationships! Jesus responds, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ When we worship God, relationships fall into order. We’re filled with His peace, and we don’t love people less, but love them rightly! We’re now patient with them because we no longer expect too much. We can handle when they get sick or something bad happens to them because they are not our whole world, Jesus is. For example, in recent years, there have been women here who have lost their husbands. Like everyone else, emotionally, they’re heartbroken. However, their life isn’t over because Jesus is their life: They have Him, His peace, and know He’s taking care of their husbands.
For the past four weeks, we had our prolife series, which is the horizontal part: loving other people. Today, we’re focused on the vertical: loving God. This is part of our annual series on the five systems of a church.
During Jesus’ temptation, the devil takes Him to a high ‘mountain’ and offers Him power over people if He ‘fall[s] down’ and worships. But where is the true mountain where Jesus receives all power? Golgotha, a hill. To worship God, we go to Mass, which makes present Jesus’ sacrifice on Golgotha and we fall down before the Eucharist.
While there, first, we might want to offer this prayer of Mark Hart, ‘Jesus, take away anything or anyone in my life that prevents me from being a saint.’ In the past, when I thought about this prayer, there were people and things that I was afraid of losing and it made me depressed; I couldn’t give them up. Yet the funny thing was that hanging on to them was making my life worse! This prayer helps us identify if we’re loving someone more than Jesus. Nevertheless, don’t worry: God’s not going to rip that person out of our lives, but He is going to ask us to love that person properly.
Second, when we receive Holy Communion, there are four steps we follow to keep Jesus as our best friend—it’s based on when a guest comes home (Fr. Andrea Gasparino, Living the Mass, 11-15): 1) Celebrate the guest (Thank Jesus and tell Him we’re happy He’s come to our body and soul); 2) Offer the guest something to eat (Offer Jesus our love; tell Him specifically, ‘Jesus, I love You more than [so-and-so]’); 3) Listen (What is Jesus saying? What is He saying through the Bible?); 4) Ask (‘Jesus, help me not to expect perfect happiness from this person.’)
By January 1, 2027 we’re aiming to have 500 of us committed to weekly adoration. We’ll do more to get ready for this in the future, but for now: Is this something that would help us focus more on Jesus and set us free from people frustrating us? Is this something we could commit to?
Jesus overcame these same temptations. Eventually, with the Holy Spirit’s help, we’ll worship God alone, love people more, and they won’t frustrate us.