The World, the Flesh and the Devil

The Devil presenting St Augustine with the Book of Vices

My sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, Year A:

The readings today, appropriately enough for the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, revolve around the weakness of our human nature, our inclination towards sin and self-seeking, and our susceptibility to temptation. They invite us to reflect on the wisdom, the realism and the compassion of Christian spirituality on these subjects, especially on what we might call the psychology of temptation.


We're not hopelessly sunk in depravity - that's never been the authentic Christian view of the human condition - but neither are we drawn effortlessly towards truth and goodness and love.

The life of faith has always been seen as a journey towards holiness and towards the light of the Gospel, a journey that involves resisting and struggling against various temptations or obstacles. And the great tradition of Christian spiritual teaching has always identified three main sources of temptation that we all face, summed up in a phrase which probably used to be better known than it is now: "the world, the flesh and the devil".

The world, or the spirit of worldliness, means the attraction we have towards created things, towards physical comfort, wealth, the admiration or good opinion of other people, a sense of status about ourselves.

People who have a purely worldly mentality are inclined to think along the lines that "you only live once" and that the good things of the material world are there to be enjoyed while life lasts. They often belittle religious faith and the moral ideals that go with it, and then our natural sensitivity to ridicule creates a temptation downplay or abandon our faith. Young people, for example, are often embarrassed if their friends laugh at them for going to church, or for taking religion seriously in any way, and that becomes a motive for giving it up altogether.

The response we make to "the world" is, ideally, to remember that all material things are transient and impermanent. Everyone's life is a journey towards eternity, one way or another, and none of the created things that take up so much of our time and energy will be going with us when we leave this world. Ultimately they're not important, and that should be a matter of deep conviction for us.

And then, if we find ourselves in an environment that tends to only value material things, we need to strive to have the courage of our Christian convictions; to pray to God for courage and a spirit of endurance, even; and we need to pray for the people who regard religious beliefs as a load of rubbish. Christ warned us to be prepared for a certain amount of ridicule for belonging to him, and that's all part of resisting the temptation to worldliness.

The second source of temptation, or obstacle to healthy spiritual life is the flesh.
Human beings are attracted naturally to bodily pleasure, and the things that give us pleasure: food, sex, alcohol, drugs - legal and illegal. The other side of the coin is that we shy away from suffering and pain, physical or emotional.

These aren't unhealthy instincts in themselves. The problem arises only when we allow our appetite for pleasure and our aversion from pain to dominate, so that it comes into conflict with our love of God and our love of our neighbour.

Again, the ideal response is to foster a sense of the dignity of our Christian calling and of our identity as followers of Christ. We're demeaning ourselves if our imagination and behaviour is dominated by food and sex and so on.

At the same time, although experiences of pain and loss are unpleasant, the Gospel surely encourages us to always approach such experiences as potentially positive and redemptive. Our salvation was won through God's suffering, and, as Christ taught, "carrying the cross" is something that always has the potential to bring us into closer union with God.

It's never right to be to glib about people's suffering, great or small, but it's probably true that there are a lot of influences in our modern consumer culture that foster high expectations of material happiness; and that mentality leaves people ill-prepared for set-backs and frustrations when they come along.

Christian life is more about finding happiness, again, in the love and service of God and our neighbour, and at a basic level that involves resisting the temptation to allow physical pleasure and the avoidance of suffering to dominate our outlook and our actions.

Last of all, a major source of temptation, as today's readings emphasise, is the Devil. Obstacles to the spiritual life don't only arise from our environment or from our inner appetites. There's an enemy of the human race who's always trying to influence our minds and wills to draw us away from God and God's way.

I think there's a significant detail in today's gospel reading: that the Devil appears just as Jesus is about to embark on his public ministry. In a sense, he does this with us too.

If we're trotting along in a more or less mediocre way, spiritually, the Devil leaves us alone. He's happy with that. It's when we embark on a more resolute attempt to live the Gospel that he steps in, tempting us to give up our resolution and trying to induce a feeling of failure and demoralisation. When we tell ourselves that its enough to be a decent person, and we'll never be a saint, the Devil has done a good job and he can go away happy again.

So we don't need to see the devil everywhere, as some over-imaginative religious people do, but let's not completely forget his presence and activity either. He's always lurking in the background and sometimes we need to be ready to stand up to him, as Jesus did in the desert.

It's a good idea to see our efforts to resist temptation as part of the drama of our spiritual journey. Every Christian's life, however quiet and unexciting it might be outwardly, is infinitely valuable to God, and he's with us constantly on our journey away from sin and towards holiness.

I think myself that if people had more of a sense of the spiritual drama or significance of their lives, it would be an antidote to the feelings of emptiness, aimlessness and meaninglessness that are widespread in our society. Christian life might be a lot of things, but it's not empty and aimless. In some ways, that's the fundamental message we can take from the readings we've listened to today, the first Sunday in Lent.