English is a very idiomatic language, so when I tutor adults learning English, I try to help them learn idiomatic as well as literal English. Here are some idioms that relate to our Scriptures this week: All that glitters is not gold; You can’t judge a book by its cover; Looks can be deceiving; Beauty is only skin‑deep; A wolf in sheep’s clothing; Don’t let the paint fool you; Appearances are often misleading; Even the devil can quote Scripture.
On the first weekend of Lent, our Hebrew Scripture and our Gospel reading direct us to look at temptation. In the Adam and Eve story, the devil tempts Adam and Eve. There are a lot of lessons in this teaching story, but one is that when a temptation comes along, it always looks good to us! Eve saw that “the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” The same thing is true in the Gospel when Jesus is tempted. He is tempted to satisfy his body by eating food, to get acclaim from others through a miraculous deed, and to become dominant over other powerful people. All these things look good to us humans! We desire them.
Later in Christian history, our great theologians (cf Aquinas; Summa I-II q 77-78) reflected on how temptations make something look so good that it becomes difficult to choose the greater good — God. Things like wealth, bodily pleasure, honors, and power are not evil in themselves. But they become disordered when they overwhelm us with our desire for them (concupiscence) and thus sidetrack us from our spiritual goal of loving God and our neighbor as we love ourselves. Verify this from some time in your life when you made a choice you now regret. What was the good or goods you were going after? What things look so good to you today that they tempt you or sidetrack you? Good reflections to start Lent!
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post February 22, First Sunday of Lent, Good-looking stuff: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.