April 11

Thursday after First Sunday in Lent

And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred. And [then] the tempter came to Him. S. Matthew 4:2, 3.

THE tempter comes, hateful to every thought of one so holy as the Son of God. How much we learn from every movement of the tempter, and from every action of our Blessed Lord! It is worth remark that the devil came to Christ when He was hungry; he seized on the weakest moment of His Flesh, when He was least able as a man to withstand his attacks. The forty days' fast had worn out His frame, and He was feeble, and, as a man, powerless. How exactly, then, do we see from this that our Lord was tempted like as we are. Satan attacks us in our weakest moments; he assaults us when the body is feeble, and consequently the spirit oppressed. Lord,

Give strong and cheerful hearts to stand

Undaunted in the wars

That Satan's fierce and mighty band

Is waging with Thy cause.

Help us to fight as warriors brave,

That we may conquer in the field,

And not one Christian man may yield

His soul to sin a slave.

Order according to Thy mind

Our life from day to day,

And when this life must be resigned

And death has seized his prey,

When all our days have flected by,

Help us to die with fearless spirit,

And let us after death inherit

Eternal life on high.