On Temptation: The First Week of Lent

Duccio, "The Temptation on the Mount"

"The tempter is clever: he does not direct us immediately toward evil but toward a false good, making us believe that power and things that satiate primary needs are what is most real. In this manner God becomes secondary; he is reduced to a means, he becomes unreal, he no longer counts, he disappears. In the final analysis, faith is what is at stake in temptations because God is at stake. In the decisive moments of life and, in fact, in every moment of life, we are faced with a choice: do we want to follow the “I” or God? Do we want to follow individual interest or rather the true Good, that which is really good?"

~Pope Benedict XVI, On the First Sunday of Lent, February 17th, 2013