1st Sunday of Lent "A"

In an animated film Madagascar 1, Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo and Melman the giraffe live together at New York's Central Park Zoo. Marty tries running away from the zoo, hoping to live in the wild. But when Alex, Gloria and Melman break out of their cages too, they get caught and end up being zoo transferred. But they all accidentally end up on Madagascar where they meet King Julien and the lemurs. Later in the wild, Alex starts to see his friends and the lemurs as food, and tries to eat them. In one instance we can hear this conversation between Alex and Marty:

Marty the Zebra: Oh, c'mon! Do I look like a steak to you?
Alex the Lion: Yeah!
Marty the Zebra: See I told you I don't look like no... wait, what'd you say?

When Alex begins to turn on his friends and the lemurs, unable to overcome his instincts and hunger, King Julien bans him to the far side of the island. But at the end Alex shows how he has overcome his predatory nature. And then the penguins help Alex satisfy his meat craving through sushi instead of steak.

Here we find a story of how a lion can overcome his instincts and hunger for the sake of his relationship with the zebra. As a Catholic, we can find a similar message from our Gospel today. We are called to overcome temptations for the sake of our relationship with God.

In today’s gospel, after Jesus was baptized “the Spirit immediately led him into the desert to be tempted by the devil…” (Matthew 4:1-11). Jesus was tempted three times but he resisted because he knew who he is in relation to God. He is the son of God and he would never put this into risk. Though he was tempted, he never sinned. His relationship with God is above all there is. This is also our call. We need to resist temptation not for anything else but to show we value our relationship with God. He is our Father as revealed by Jesus, and we are his adopted children through baptism. We can face temptation because we know who we are before God and we value our relationship with Him –we are his children. We will not allow then to strain our relationship with him by succumbing to temptations.