The temptation of our Lord Jesus Christ

The Lenten Season is upon us. It began with the celebration of Ash Wednesday last week on March 5th. Ash Wednesday is the way that the Catholic Church reminds all of us of our mortality. Indeed, whether we like it or not, and no matter how rich you can be beyond your wildest dreams and be able to afford all the luxuries of life in order to pamper your bodies. All of us are going to get old and eventually die of something, if not old age.

So for this Season of Lent, it is wise to give yourself a quick check, whether you’ve spent too much time in beautifying yourself, while neglecting your soul. It is that season of the year where we should nourish our spirits and souls and get ourselves up to speed with the will of God, rather than our own will. At the very moment that our will would be aligned to God’s will, then we would have achieved what it takes to earn eternal life, but please take note, not because of our worth, but rather because of the Mercy of God.

Today’s gospel is found in Matt. 4: 1-11 in your Bible. It is about the Temptation of our Lord Jesus Christ. This scripture reading is already known to many Catholics, but it is always good to recount this story especially in this Season of Lent in order for us to deal with our own temptations because we are all frail human beings and are so easily tempted by evil.

“1 Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2, He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. 3 The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” 4 He said in reply, “It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, 6 and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” 7 Jesus answered him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

8 Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, 9 and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” 10 At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written, “The Lord, your God shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’” 11 Then the devil left him and, behold, angles came and ministered to him.”

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There is no doubt that God the Father allowed his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ to be born of the Virgin Mary and become one of us. Thus, the Salvific plan of God meant for our Lord Jesus Christ who is True God and True man to also be tempted by the devil. If we frail human beings get tempted every day, Christ’s too in all his humanity shared in the temptation of the devil and today’s scripture is the story of his temptation.

This conversation with our Lord Jesus Christ and Satan himself reveals certain things… like Satan always questioned, “If you are the Son of God…” This clearly shows that Satan looked at our Lord Jesus Christ as a holy man, but he wasn’t really sure that he was the Son of God. But in the second temptation, actually our Lord Jesus reveals his divinity when Satan said, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’”

In reply to this question, our Lord Jesus Christ replied to Satan,  “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” Now wasn’t Satan putting God himself into a test? Yet despite this open admission by our Lord, “You shall not put the Lord, your God to the test,” Satan failed to see the divinity in our Lord. Yet Satan failed in every attempt he made to entice Jesus to worship him. Perhaps Satan knew that the Son of God would become man and therefore, it would be easy for him to tempt Jesus the man. But that didn’t happen.

So what was the secret of our Lord Jesus Christ that he was able to thwart the scheming Satan? The answer lies in the opening paragraphs of today’s gospel, which read “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry.”

There’s the secret of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you wish to thwart Satan or the evil spirits, all you need to do is fast for forty days and forty nights in the desert. Why a desert? Well, I can only second guess that a dessert doesn’t really have anything to offer… no water no food. But it certainly strengthens our spirits and souls for us to be able to overcome the devil’s temptation. If our Lord Jesus Christ was able to do this so can we.

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