And lead us not?

He made us one with him when he chose to be tempted by Satan. We have heard in the gospel how the Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. Certainly Christ was tempted by the devil. In Christ you were tempted, for Christ received his flesh from your nature, but by his own power gained salvation for you; he suffered death in your nature, but by his own power gained life for your; he suffered insults in your nature, but by his own power gained glory for you; therefore, he suffered temptation in your nature, but by his own power gained victory for you.  
If in Christ we have been tempted, in him we overcome the devil. Do you think only of Christ's temptation and fail to think of his victory? See yourself as tempted in him, and see yourself as victorious in him. He could have kept the devil from himself; but if he were not tempted he could not teach you how to triumph over temptation. - Saint Augustine

I haven't opened Death on a Friday Afternoon yet, but I've found no lack of things to reflect on in the Office of Readings thus far this Lent. The thing is, I really don't have to many of my own reflections to add to St. Augustine's excellent words. They're just pretty much a reminder for me.

(That said, of course I've thought of something to say . . . )

I think that sometimes we think of our own temptations as being greater than what others face, or maybe of less importance to deal with, so that we either excuse or accommodate our failure to triumph over them.  Or perhaps we think that the grace that was present for Christ to draw upon in the face of his temptation is less available to us.  Both of these strike me as a sort of reverse pride, as a way of exalting our sinfulness to the status of something we can't do anything about.  It takes one sort of humility to acknowledge that, no, my temptations really aren't all that especially unavoidable, and another sort - one that we don't often think of as being humility but I think it is - to realize that I have the same grace at work in me that enabled Jesus to resist the devil.

I realize that it was Jesus himself who taught us to pray to the Father to lead us not into temptation, but we should remember that we're going to encounter it anyway, and we can count on him to lead us through it when we do, if we'll just turn to him and acknowledge our need for him in that moment.