World War II essentially began with Poland being conquered by Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union. After the defeat of the Nazi’s, the Communists ruled Poland ruthlessly. Poles were shipped to Gulags, enemies of the Communist Party were arrested and killed. The Atheistic Communist Police State restricted many freedoms, the Church was forced underground, seminaries were closed, priests were killed.
So imagine, the new Polish Pope, who himself was ordained during this period of religious oppression, returns home and begins to speak about God, publicly, openly. Crowds for his masses grew and grew, for the first time in decades, the Poles began to raise their heads and look around. They began to recognize the great strength that comes from culture, tradition, national unity and their Catholic faith. Seeds of hope were planted on that trip, which eventually saw the fall of the Iron Curtain due to the great Polish Solidarity movement that formed after the Pope’s visit.
Well, on the last day of the Pope’s visit, two million Poles gathered in victory square in warsaw. And something happened that day which changed history. As the saintly Pope preached, a few people from one corner of the gathering began to chant three words. And those three words began to spread throughout the crowd, to the point where two million began were those three words in unison. What did they chant? “Russia go home”, “Down with Communism?” No. Nor did they even chant “Long live the Pope”. The people of Poland, two million strong, began to chant “We want God”, “We want God”. Two million people, it went on for 30 seconds, a minute, two minutes. An advisor approached the Pope and suggested that he calm down the crowd, and he said, no way, this is why I’m here. “We want God” for Seventeen minutes, two million people chanting “We want God”
When the iron curtain fell, and the archives of the KGB were opened, a telegram from the Commandant of Warsaw was discovered giving an account of that day. And it ended with the phrase “It’s all over”. The people of Poland had openly and publicly confessed they wanted God, not a totalitarian regime who acted as if they were.
“We want God”, “I want God” is the most ancient, embedded desire in the depths of our souls. We were made by God, we were made for God, we long for God. And yet, rivaling that most profound longing is a counterfeit proposal: “I don’t need God”.
This rivalry, this battle within our souls goes all the way back to the garden of eden, as we heard in our first reading, the ancient temptation which our first parents faced and caved to. Adam and Eve, will you obey God or turn your eyes and face from Him? Will you kneel before the divine will of heaven or put yourselves on the throne? Are you going to let God be God or are you going to play act and pretend that you are God? We know the result, and every human sin in history has been that same choice played over and over.
In today’s Gospel, we hear of Jesus, too, facing temptation, during his Lent, his 40 days in the desert. Jesus, will you follow and obey the will of your Heavenly Father or not? Will you, Son of God, be subject to the Father’s will or seek to supplant it?
One of the characteristics not just of communist Russia, but the growing secularism within our own current culture is the claim that we can build a society without God, we can get along just fine without God, we can create through purely human efforts a utopian state without reference or relationship to God.
But, this error, is the same lie told to Adam and Eve, “you don’t need God, you won’t die.” But godlessness, the failure to recognize the dignity of each human person created in the divine image, only leads to doom.
Now, most americans claim to believe in god or a higher power, still, about 80%... down from near unanimous belief in God not too many years ago. And yet, the first reading and the gospel highlight that believing in God is not the same as obeying Him. The perennial, ancient temptation is to refashion God in our own image, according to our own wants and desires. Yes 80% of Americans claim to believe in God, but for many, that’s a god of their fashioning, a god who doesn’t care if you go to church, doesn’t care if you cheat in business or on your spouse or who you sleep with, doesn’t care if you commit infanticide or kill the baby in the mother’s womb o kill your body and mind with excessive alcohol or illegal drugs. The voice that claims that Christian morality is a relic to be discarded is not the voice of God.
And that voice, the voice of the rebel, fallen angel, the voice of the serpent, speaks to all of us, tempts all of us, “you don’t need God” to be happy, “you don’t need to pray”, “you don’t need to obey”.
But, the Lord Jesus show us that we must and can stand firm against temptations, and shows us how. In each of the temptations, in the Gospel today, we see the Lord resisting the temptations of the devil by recalling the words of the Holy Scriptures.
The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” He said in reply, “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” And so on. After 40 days of fasting bread looked good, just like the fruit of that forbidden tree. In the face of temptation, the Lord recalled the scriptures, and applied them to his situation.
In the second temptation, we see that the devil knows the scriptures, too. He’ll quote them out of context for his vile purposes. So, we need to know them better, always reading the scriptures with the mind of the church
This is why we should know our scriptures well, that when we are faced with temptations and moral dilemmas, we may recall the word of God, and allow that word, not the voice of temptation to guide us. To recognize we need God in order to live, and to live well, to live righteously. We need God, to guide us and give us strength.
During Lent we confront our sins and our temptations. We look at the sins into which we’ve fallen over the past year, we repent of them, and seek God’s word to strengthen us against future sin. We read and ponder the word of God. We do well to meditate upon the readings from daily Mass, and the passion narratives from the Gospels to come to appreciate the great victory Christ won for us through his suffering and death.
As we engage in the Lenten works of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, we are united with Catholics around the world, and Catholics of all ages, who in the face of the oppressive powers of darkness and the temptations of the flesh, cry out to heaven, “we want God” …for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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