Just when you thought it was safe to eat a hamburger Friday night, Lent returns this weekend!

But it is so much more than depriving yourself of that rack o’ ribs to start the weekend… (Can you tell I’m hungry?)

Matthew 4 begins with the story of the Holy Spirit leading Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil. (Pay close attention.)

First, he tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. After all, Jesus hadn’t had a meal in forty days. (Interesting number, but we are focusing on something else this time. Still a good reminder there is a reason for EVERYTHING in our Faith!)

This weekend’s First Reading (Lv 19:1-2, 17-18) instructs us to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This is not as easy as it might appear.

I live in a townhouse (which means I have a neighbor to each side with nothing more than common walls separating our living spaces). I also have an adorable five year-old who defies physics by walking down our stairs with such force you’d swear she was an NFL offensive tackle. And even though I tell her repeatedly to walk down the stairs like a normal human being, she gets excited about life and has such joy that her little body can’t contain it. It is impossible to blame her and—in truth—I’m glad she’s a little bundle of joy rather than a quiet, depressed child.

Superbowl Sunday is one of the few nationwide shared experiences we have left. Oh, sure, there are exceptions. But the vast majority of the country spends one Sunday a year in a home or an establishment where the game is playing on at least one television.

If you aren’t—you realize you are an outlier,

When I was a child, if the president was on television, everyone watched. We didn’t really have a choice. He was on ABC, CBS, and NBC. The only other option was PBS, and that was worse. If a space shuttle launched, school stopped and we all watched. (I still remember where I was when the Challenger exploded.) It even seemed like half the country tuned in to NBC on Thursday nights with hits including, Cheers, the Cosby Show, Friends, Seinfeld, and ER.

In this column, I have an advantage over homilists—I can zero in on a single line from the four readings (if you include the Psalm), whereas celebrants need to do their best to integrate as many of the readings as possible.

This is one of those weeks where I can’t help myself because when I opened the readings, a line from Isaiah jumped of the page.

“Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!”