As Lent begins, the liturgy leads us with Jesus into the desert: a place of trial, but also of truth and encounter. In this commentary on the Sunday Gospel, Friar Luciano Audisio invites us to recognize that temptation does not begin with obvious evil, but with doubt about identity: forgetting that we are beloved children. Only from that certainty is it possible to live faith as trust, obedience, and adoration.
The Desert: Trial, Freedom, and Interior Truth
As we begin this season of Lent, the liturgy leads us into the desert with Jesus. This is not a secondary detail or a simple pious memory: it is an invitation to enter with Him into that space where what is essential is decided. The Gospel tells us that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert. It was not by His own initiative or by a voluntaristic impulse. It is the Spirit who leads Him. This already illuminates our life: there are deserts we do not choose, but which, mysteriously, are part of the path by which God guides us.
The desert, in Scripture, is the place of trial and encounter. There Israel spent forty years, learning to leave behind the nostalgia for Egypt and to trust in a God who did not always respond according to their expectations. There Moses fasted forty days on the mountain, entering the cloud to hear the voice of the Lord. The desert is a school of freedom. It is the space where superficial securities fall away and what truly dwells in the heart is laid bare.
We too know the desert. Not necessarily as a geographical place, but as an interior experience: moments of aridity, of crisis, of fragility, of questions without answers. They are not punishments. They are occasions. They are the place where our faith is purified and where it is decided whether we trust in God or in our own strategies.
The Gospel emphasizes that, after fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus felt hungry. The Son of God experiences human limitation. He is hungry. He is vulnerable. He does not present Himself as a superman shielded against need. And it is precisely at that point, at the threshold of fragility, where temptation appears. This also happens with us: temptation does not usually arrive when we feel strong, but when we touch our limit.
Temptation: A Doubt About Identity
The tempter’s first word is disturbing: “If you are the Son of God…”. He does not begin by proposing an obvious evil. He begins by sowing a doubt about identity. “If you are…”. He calls into question what the Father has just proclaimed at the Jordan: “You are my beloved Son.” Temptation always begins there: in the attempt to erode our deepest identity. When we forget that we are beloved children, we begin to desperately seek proofs, confirmations, securities that give us value.
“Command that these stones become bread.” It seems reasonable. He is hungry. What is wrong with using power to resolve a need? But the question is deeper. It is about deciding how to live sonship. Does being a Son mean using God and the gift received to affirm oneself? Or does it mean living in trust, receiving everything as a gift? Jesus responds with Scripture: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” The hunger is real, but it is not the ultimate thing. Life is not sustained only by what one possesses or consumes, but by the relationship with God. Jesus refuses to convert His sonship into self-sufficiency. He prefers to trust.
The second temptation begins again in the same way: “If you are the Son of God…”. Now it is about throwing Himself down from the temple. It is the temptation to force God to intervene, to convert trust into spectacle, to manipulate the relationship. It is like saying: “If you really love me, prove it the way I want.” How many times our prayer resembles that! We do not ask with humility, but we demand signs. Jesus responds: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Faith does not consist in putting God to the test, but in abandoning oneself to Him, even when He does not respond according to our calculations.
The third temptation is that of power. All the kingdoms of the world and their glory. The tempter proposes a shortcut: dominion without the cross, lordship without obedience, success without surrender. It is humanity’s permanent seduction: to believe that history is saved from above, by imposing, controlling, subjugating. Jesus rejects that logic with radical clarity: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” True freedom is born from adoration, not from dominion. Power that does not pass through obedience to the Father ends up being idolatry.
In the desert it is revealed who Jesus is. He does not demonstrate that He is the Son by converting stones into bread, or by throwing Himself from the temple, or by accepting the power of the world. He manifests His sonship by remaining in trust, in obedience, and in adoration. His identity does not need to be proven through spectacular gestures. It is founded on the living relationship with the Father.
Lent: Returning to the Heart of the Father
And here is the key for us. Lent is not a time to multiply exterior practices without more. It is a time to return to the truth of our identity. From where do we live? From the insecurity that needs to affirm itself, manipulate, or dominate? Or from the humble certainty of knowing ourselves to be beloved children?
When we forget that we are children, others easily become competitors, threats, or instruments. When we live as children, others are discovered as brothers and sisters. That is why temptation is not only a moral problem; it is a question of relationship. The tempter seeks to divide, to break communion with God and with others. Jesus, on the other hand, remains in unity.
This Sunday the Lord invites us to enter our own desert with Him. Not to frighten us, but to purify us. Not to humiliate us, but to remind us who we are. Perhaps we feel hunger for recognition, for security, for power. Perhaps we experience the temptation to force God or to seek shortcuts. The Gospel shows us that victory does not consist in not feeling the trial, but in responding from the Word.
May this Lent be for us a journey of return to the heart of the Father. May in the midst of our fragilities we hear again His voice: “You are my beloved child.” And may, sustained by that certainty, we learn to live not by bread alone, but by the Word that gives life, in trust, in obedience, and in adoration.
