First Reading: Gn 2:7–9; 3:1–7
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 51:3–4, 5–6, 12–13, 17
Second Reading: Rom 5:12–19 or 5:12, 17–19
Gospel: Mt 4:1–11

In today’s selection from the Letter to the Romans, Paul connects the first reading and the Gospel by proposing that we look at Jesus as the new Adam. Just as death entered the world through the old Adam’s sin, Paul says, so life has been restored through the new Adam’s sacrifice.

In the first reading, we find the story of the fall of the old Adam, which is set in the garden the Lord God planted in Eden. It teems with life, with various trees to satisfy every hunger of soul and body. There Adam is established as God’s son and servant. But when tempted, he lets “his trust in his Creator die in his heart,” as the Catechism puts it (no. 397*). And so it happened that “through one man sin entered the world” (Rom 5:12). The setting of today’s Gospel, the testing of the new Adam, is the desert, that place where every hunger goes unsatisfied. There the tempter engages Jesus in conversation, as he did Eve in the garden. But Jesus, trusting absolutely in God’s word, withstands the devil’s wiles. And so it happened that through one man, God’s true Son, sin was overcome. This Lent, how will we allow Jesus to conquer sin in our own lives?