February 22 nd, 2026 (1st Sunday Lent A)

Dear brothers and sisters, We are beginning the time of Lent, this is a very important time that prepares us for Easter. Also Christ for forty days prepared himself to fight the devil in the desert. The devil is in fact the great tempter, murderer, and liar from the beginning, he is always tempting us. In the desert Christ faces three temptations, the same temptations are presented also to us every day and specially in this time of lent. The first one we are faced with is of security and of having a comfortable life without neither suffering nor precariousness, “to turn these stones in bread” this is the temptation of the heart. The second one is to demand from God a miracle "grow yourself from the parapet of the temple” meaning to want to change one’s life and not to accept the cross and failures we have in our life to ask for a miracle to change all the things we consider wrong; this is the temptation of the mind. The third temptation instead is the one of the idles of the world, “adore me and all of this will be yours” to find pleasure and happiness not in God but in money, power and success. Christ fights back at the devil through the most powerful weapon, the word of God, rejecting all of these temptations. God wants to give all of us as poor and weak as we may be the strength to be united to God just like Christ and every day renounce the devil and all his false allurements. Like him Christ wants to give us the grace to also win the devil in the temptations of our life having the word of God always with us and loving God above everything with our whole heart, mind and strength experiencing the providence and power of God. Peace, Fr. Nicholas