Temptations are vexatious, burdensome and annoying. Oscar Wilde is quoted to have said, “The only way to overcome temptations is to give in to them”. There is a modicum of truth to this observation because a characteristic of temptation is that it “nags” at you until exhausted, you finally relent and give in. Throughout Lent, the Church, our Holy Mother, bids us to grow in awareness of and in sensitivity to the subtleties of the Devil’s machination who sows discord throughout God’s creation.
Even though the 1st Reading chronicles the Fall of both Adam and Eve, it is not a narrative of despair. Man’s fall is also the beginning of salvation. What the Fall simply describes is our common inheritance. Every single being, even Jesus and Mary who do not inherit the taint of Adam’s sin, is not free from the Devil’s afflictions. But more than the failure of Adam and Eve, anyone who has a relationship with God will necessarily undergo the purification of testing. This explains the sinless Son of God not being spared as the 1st Sunday of Lent opens with His temptations.
The background is quite simple. The relationship between the Father and Son is affirmed in the River Jordan. “This is my beloved Son”. Rightly after His Baptism, Jesus is driven into the desert where His affiliation or Sonship with the Father is purified and deepened. Firstly, Jesus is tempted to exercise His divinity by changing stones to bread to satisfy His human hunger. Secondly, He is tempted to test God’s promise of protection by throwing Himself off from a high point. Finally, He is tempted to embrace the worship of a false god.
Christ’s temptations speak to the heart of our human experience. Temptations belong to our postlapsarian reality. More importantly, the devil knows our weaknesses and he will exploit our vulnerability. However, overcoming every temptation hurled at Him, Jesus shows that it is possible for us to resist the Devil. The Church, through our Lenten self-denial, provides us with the means to help us overcome temptations.
In other words, the reality of temptations is actually a call to return to the life of grace. In the desert, Jesus prayed and during His earthly ministry, counselled the Disciples that “this type of evil can only be defeated by prayer and fasting”. When suggested to satisfy His hunger, He countered the Devil’s deception by insisting that man does not live on bread alone but to hang on to every word of God.
This challenges our way of doing things if we are accustomed to self-reliance. Just like the Israelites in the desert, we are also tempted to rely on our own strength and ultimately, for our salvation, we believe that we can save ourselves. Pride is not the only reason for this inward turn. Our self-reliance reveals our forgetfulness. We have forgotten that we are truly creatures dependent on God.
The temptations in the desert manifest the limitations of creatureliness. Notice how the devil enticed Eve to go beyond her creaturehood? The temptation of Jesus to exercise His power is also an inducement to rebel against His human nature. Satan offers a patently false suggestion that freedom is independence from God.
We too find ourselves in the same dilemma where we want to be someone. We forget that to be someone is really an exercise in which we are defined in terms of others. “I am me because I am not you”. In fact, relationship is the identity of creatureliness. By putting the Devil in his place, Jesus demonstrated His relationship with God the Father by not testing Him but by acknowledging and worshipping Him alone.
This Lent we are invited back to the relationship we have with God. It began at our Baptism. Even though we mature physically, some of us may be stunted in our spiritual development. If our Lenten practices are to mean anything, they re-establish our relationship with God and with others. Even though we are sinners, Lent is not designed to make us feel bad that we are sinful or prone to sin. As such, penance is not an exercise in self-loathing. Instead, they symbolise the desire to repair our relationship with God. Penitence is an exercise in the ordered love of ourselves. For example, making time for confession is part of this endeavour because it recognises that the relationship with God needs repairing.
The road to proper self-love and relationship with God will be filled with temptations. But to be tempted is never a sign that we are forsaken or abandoned. Instead the presence of temptation signals that we do have a relationship with God. Thus, the prayer for the sick person during anointing illustrates how insidious temptation can be. An ill person may be suffering excruciatingly, and yet that person is also not free from being tempted. A dying person can be seduced not to trust in God. Hence, the invocation makes much sense because an invalid, even though that person is very near to death, needs strength to continue believing in God.
In summary, the Temptations of Christ reveal a facet of Christianity which we may have forgotten or ignored. As long as we walk through this valley of death, there will be seductions, allurements and entrapments. There is an open rebellion against God and since we are made to crown God’s creation, placed higher than even celestial beings, it makes sense that some envious angels would set out to destroy the pinnacle of God’s creation. Moreover, as creatures endowed with freedom, the temptation is always to go against the rule or governance of God.[1]
Temptation is our reality. Sometimes we may lament like Job. Why? Why am I being tested so sorely? If we are entitled, naturally we will be annoyed that we are being afflicted. But if we accept that there is a cosmic battle at play, then we shall never be surprised by our testing because the path to salvation is fraught with temptations. And a tell-tale sign that you are on the right track is when you are beset by temptations. Overcoming temptations is a basic component in the passage of purification. Through the battles with temptations, our relationship with God is purified as Jesus was in the desert. If we are going to hell, Devil does not need to work hard. Therefore, temptations indicate that we are on the right path for the closer we are to God, the more the subtle the temptations. The nearer we are to salvation, the greater the seductions. Be watchful. Be prepared. The violence of our temptations is Satan’s strategy to make us lose hope. But trust in God. Christ has conquered. He has prevailed. He will provide the strength. If we fail, humbly go for confession. He is ready to forgive, He is there to grant the stamina of grace.
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[1] The problem is that our linear computational thinking has not only ignored but relativised “evil” to the point of non-existence. We have difficulty grasping the concept of evil. Evil does not exist, meaning to say that there is no such a thing as evil. Instead evil is the privation of good. Even though evil does not exist, privation does have a reality. Evil as the absence of good renders its effect as a “vacuum sucking out the good”.
