First Sunday of Lent 2026 Year A

 247 First Sunday Lent A 2026

I can remember that when I was still very young, door-to-door salespeople used to come to our house quite regularly and knock on the door. It was a pretty standard method for sales back then, because I suppose, at that time many families had just one car, and one person was left at home while the other went to work. Many companies had carefully mapped routes, and the better sales people would move up quickly to better routes with more loyal groups of customers. It was really quite a convenience for shoppers who couldn’t always get to the store.

But it could be an annoyance sometimes. There was a standard joke in the funny papers and in Saturday morning cartoons around that time: a homeowner was never supposed to allow a sales person to get a “foot in the door.” Now, these days, if we talk about “getting a foot in the door” this means getting a chance to meet someone in order to demonstrate our skills and knowledge. For example, a young college graduate might go to a campus “job fair” in order to meet representatives from companies who are looking to hire new people. Thus, the graduate might use this job fair to get “a foot in the door,” so to speak, to get a chance to demonstrate to a hiring company what he has learned, and how his skills might benefit the company if he were to be hired.

But back in the “door-to-door” days, a “foot-in-the-door” was a stalling technique used by sales people to delay rejection, to keep the conversation going, to gain a few extra moments to turn things to their advantage. Usually the situation went something like this, the customer would answer the door and say to the sales person, “oh no thank you, I’m not interested.” But as the homeowner began to shut the door, the sales person would put a foot in the way of the closing door, preventing it from closing. Now the homeowner was stuck: they couldn’t very well walk away and leave the door open; and with the guy’s foot in the way, pushing the door shut might injure his foot. This maneuver gave the sales guy a few more moments to try his best sales pitches.

This “foot in the door” is exactly how temptation works. If a temptation comes, which they do, and we allow ourselves a split second before shutting the door on it, the tempter will get a foot in the door, which is all the chance he needs to pour on the sales pitch. By our brief hesitation, we have allowed the tempter to gain a few more moments to try to get us to buy whatever it is that he is selling. And the tempter knows his clients well. The tempter knows us really well. He knows what makes us itch, so to speak, and he offers us some scratching options that appear very attractive at that moment when temptation strikes us. This is why we need to be on constant alert for the tempter and the “foot in the door.”

Today in our Gospel, the Spirit has led Jesus into the desert to be tempted. That’s the very first sentence of our Gospel: “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” We will remember that our Lord was like us in every way. Except sin. Jesus never sinned, Jesus was always so in tune with the Father that he always acted according to the Father’s Will. Always. Even when it meant accepting His own suffering and death! Jesus never gave in to temptation, but He certainly understands what it feels like to be tempted. Jesus felt everything we feel, the Gospel says he was hungry after fasting. He got tired and needed sleep, and He got hungry and needed to eat. He got cold and he got hot. He experienced everything that we experience as humans. He also had to experience temptation, just as we do. He had to experience temptation, because we experience temptation. So Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted. But the story of temptation starts a long time before this. 

St. Paul tells the Romans, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death.” The community of Christian believers in Rome would not have known the story of our first reading today, from the beginning of the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden. Their every need is satisfied. They live in happiness and peace. They are in a perfect relationship with God. They do not know sickness, and they were not supposed to know death. That is, until the serpent stops by one day to have a conversation with Eve. The serpent talks about the tree with the fruit that they must not eat, and what would happen to them if they did eat it. The serpent asks Eve, “did God really say that you would die if you ate that fruit? You certainly will not die!” the serpent lies. There is a pause here, as Eve recalls this tree and its fruit. She remembers, “that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.” 

In that brief moment, as her thoughts wander to the tree, can we see what has happened here? Instead of Eve slamming the door on the serpent, she has allowed him the chance to get his foot in the door… well, metaphorically speaking, anyway, the serpent has bought enough time to pour on the temptation, and we know how this ends. Adam and Eve eat the fruit, they are banned from Eden, and sin and death enter the world. This is the story of the Original Sin. But today we will remember that this is not the end of the story! St. Paul goes on to tell the Romans, “we, we who are believers, we are to receive abundance of grace and the gift of Justification through the one Jesus Christ.” “In conclusion,”  St. Paul says, “just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all.”

This is the Pascal Mystery summarized in just a few short lines. Through the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, sin and death entered the world; and then through the obedience of Jesus Christ, through his obedience even unto death, we are redeemed from sin and death. 

Therefore, we see that it is fitting that Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted first! But He did not give in to them. The temptations He endured were nothing new, they were the four big ones: temptations to Pleasure, Power, Wealth, and  to Honor. But Jesus rejected them all, He rejected the tempter at the door. Jesus did not allow the tempter a moment to get his metaphorical “foot in the door,” Jesus quickly and firmly shut the door to temptation.

And thus we begin our Lenten journey into our own desert on this First Sunday of Lent. Thus do we recall the mysteries of transgression, sin and death. But at the same time, our Holy Church offers us these seven weeks of Lent as a sort of “Spiritual Boot Camp,” a time of “turning from sin and turning toward the Gospel, just as we were reminded of last Wednesday when we received our ashes on our foreheads, as a sign of our weakness, as a sign of our mortality.

We will also remember that we are People of Hope! Sin and death are dark topics. But as we begin this Season of Lent, we will willingly pass through this desert, we will willingly pass through this time of darkness. We will willingly make use of the three great tools the Church has given us to help us in our repentance, we must make use of the tools of Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving. Let us make good use of these seven weeks in the desert, let us increase our time in daily prayer. Let us deny ourselves some food, and let us deny ourselves of some other good things. And, let us share some of what we have with others.

The days of the door-to-door sales people are over, but temptation now has a huge pipeline into our homes. Temptation no longer comes knocking; temptation comes streaming into our lives through the internet. We need to raise our guard, we need to exercise our will-power.

Our moral strength, our will-power, is very similar to our muscles: the more we use them, the stronger they get. The stronger they get, the more quickly they react. If we exercise our Wills through the practice of the Virtues like we exercise our muscles with exercise and weights and stretching, the stronger we become, and the more quickly we can react, the more quickly we can close the door on temptation before the tempter has a chance to get a foot in the door.