We all learn, painfully sometimes, the wisdom contained in the little aphorism, all that glitters is not gold. On this first weekend of Lent, our readings direct us to look at temptation. The first (Hebrew Scripture) reading is the Adam and Eve sin story. Of course the first thing to note is the word “story”; we don’t think the first Homo sapiens lived in a paradise, spoke in complete sentences, and talked to snakes! There are a lot of lessons in this teaching story, but one is that when a temptation comes along, it always makes something look really good to us! Eve saw that “the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” In the Gospel, Jesus is tempted by three things that look really good to each of us: get bread (get our material needs met abundantly); get acclaim (be thought well of by others, be admired); and get control (be powerful over others, the “top dog”). Later in Christian history, the great theologian Augustine reflected on how the essence of a temptation is to make something look so good to us that it becomes difficult to choose the greater good — God. Is there a time in your life when you made a choice that you now regret? What was the good you were going after? What was the good you lost? What things look so good to you today that they tempt you? Is there a greater good?
– Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia