EVERY WORD FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD

A SERMON FOR QUADRAGESIMA SUNDAY

We stand at the threshold of Lent.  With forty days and forty nights of fasting and penance, culminating in the remembrance of the Passion and Death of our blessed Lord, it is not a particularly pleasant threshold to be standing at.  To give us a little fortitude for what lies ahead, to encourage us in our spiritual and physical endeavors, our Lord himself gave us the example by retiring to the wilderness and himself fasting for forty days and forty nights.  We’ve managed to get through the first four days already, and hopefully we’re all succeeding in following the Church’s fasting laws without cheating, maybe even adding a few voluntary penances of our own.  But before we congratulate ourselves that we haven’t dipped into the cookie jar the last few afternoons, today’s Gospel should remind us that our petty little temptations to break the fast are nothing compared to the temptation our Lord felt after forty days without eating anything.

“And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights,” St. Matthew’s Gospel informs us, “he was afterward an hungred.”  No kidding!  We’d be hungry too.  And if we hadn’t eaten for that long, do you think we could drive past McDonald’s without being tempted not to drive past, but to “drive through” and order a burger?  We might already be experiencing such temptations.  After all, it is quite within our power to turn the steering wheel into the drive-thru lane, pull a credit card out of our wallet, and then very much enjoy the fruits of our naughtiness.  We could, but by the help of God’s grace, we do not.  We remember our Lord’s reply to Satan, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Our Lord himself, you see, had higher powers than we do, and could easily change a stone into bread.  Just as easily as we could pull into McDonald’s.  The powers were higher, but the temptation was the same.  “I’m hungry but I’m fasting.  I shouldn’t eat, but I really want to.  I have the opportunity.  Will I or won’t I?”

Our Lord endures these temptations from Satan to show us that he shares our human weaknesses because he too is human in everything.  Everything but sin, that is.  Like us, he is tempted but, unlike us, he does not sin.  He gives us the example that although we may be human, we can remain free from sin too, if we don’t fall into temptation. 

Temptations are not bad in themselves.  On the contrary, they are our opportunity to earn our place in heaven.  In that sense, they are friends, the kind of friends our mother warned us about.  They’re friends to be avoided at all costs, as they will try to lead us into sin.  But no matter how hard we try to ignore them, they keep texting and calling and coming over to the house to get us to go along with them to do mischief.  They’re the type of friend where we learn, from their bad example, how to be good ourselves.

Our Lord suffered three temptations.  Twice, Satan uses Holy Scripture to tempt the Son of God.  All three times, our Lord uses Scripture to counter his temptation.  This is an important warning to us all, which our Lord enunciates very clearly in those words that we must “live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Satan may quote scripture by heart very cleverly, but Satan hardly lives by the words of Scripture, the words that come from God’s mouth—he merely uses those words against God.  He takes the truth and twists it to make it something entirely different, something that drives us away from God’s grace rather than encouraging us to live the life of grace. 

This is the danger of Holy Scripture, and one which the traditional Church was quite aware of.  The other Christian denominations rightly revere the Bible.  They hold it up as the divine Word, which it is, and they claim to follow it.  If they actually follow the true meaning of the words of Scripture and live by them, those words that proceed out of the mouth of God, they will save their souls.  “What’s that you say, Father? Protestants will save their souls outside the Church?”  No, I didn’t say that.  I said “IF they actually follow the true meaning of the words in the Bible, they won’t be Protestant any more.  They’ll follow the true meaning of “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” and they will seek to become members of Christ’s true Church founded on Peter.  They will live by many other verses of Scripture that point the reader along only one road, and that’s the road to Rome.  The promise that our Lord made that he would send his Holy Spirit to guide his Church in all truth, that the Catholic Church, in other words, cannot err in matters of faith and morals.  They will live by our Lord’s words when he said that his Body is food indeed and his Blood is drink indeed, and that unless you eat this Body and drink this Blood you will have no life in you.  They’ll live by these words by seeking the Real Presence of Christ that is certainly not to be found in any Protestant church.  They will live by the Scripture when our Blessed Lady proclaimed that “henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, and they will stop calling her just “Mary” and start revering her as the Blessed Virgin Mother that is her true role.  If they live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, they will be Catholic.

It escapes me how anyone outside the Catholic Church can ever possibly imagine they have the truth when it is left to each individual to interpret Scripture the way he wants.  It seems not to matter to them that they all end up contradicting each other with their own interpretations of the words that come from the mouth of God.  With no infallible Church to guide them, they are left with no real faith.  How can they have faith in something when the person in the pew next to them believes something entirely different.  It is a simple fact that two contradictory statements cannot both be true.  2 + 2 cannot equal 4 and 5 at the same time.  Only Christ’s Church, protected by the infallible guidance of his Holy Spirit, can give us the confidence that what we believe is truly the correct interpretation of Scripture.  And while Protestants may see this as just Catholics being arrogant, it is in fact nothing of the sort, but the humble acceptance that what Christ said is actually true.

Let’s not weaponize our faith, by refusing charity to those who are not Catholic.  On the contrary, our unique claim to truth bestows upon us the duty to be charitable to all men, a charity that is best shown by leading them into the truth.  They may live by some of the words that proceed from the mouth of God, but certainly not by every word.  If the Catholic Church claims to have the whole truth, it is up to us and only us to explain to other Christians the other words, the ones they do not live by.  For if we leave them to wallow in their ignorance of these truths, we can be sure they will end up living “by bread alone.”  Is this not what they end up consuming at their false communion services—bread alone?  And the Novus Ordo even, is this too not “bread alone” that ends up being passed around from layman to layman, hand to hand? 

There’s a message for our own day in this Gospel.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  We can’t pick and choose, like the Protestants and the Novus Ordo folks.  So whatever we do, we must never fall into temptation, we must never settle for bread alone.  In the second temptation, our Lord reminds Satan, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  And in the third, he drives out the devil with the words, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  We must follow Christ’s example this Lent, and we must start by refusing stedfastly not to fall into temptation, and by driving out Satan so we can worship and serve God in the state of grace.  Once he’s gone, be assured that, as with our Lord in the desert, angels will come and minister unto us, bearing us up, and leading us back under the safety of God’s wings.