The narrative of the
temptations of Jesus (Luke 4:1-13) happened after the baptism of Jesus, when
the Voice from Heaven has declared Jesus as “Son”. The desert becomes the first
arena in which that identity is tested, clarified, and enacted. Lent, beginning
in the Church’s calendar, deliberately reflects this desert experience.
Luke presents the episode
with a theological precision that is easy to overlook. Jesus “filled with the
Holy Spirit”, led by the Spirit, and then “tempted by the devil.” The presence
of the Spirit does not eliminate struggle; rather it inaugurates it. The
wilderness is place of truth, where illusions are exposed, and the fundamental
question surfaces: “What does it really mean to live as God’s beloved, as Sons
and Daughters of God?” Temptation, in this
sense, is not simply a moral seduction; it is essentially a contest over divine
call and trust in God, especially when we are most vulnerable.
Now, let’s look at the temptations
as presented by Luke. Each temptation targets a different distortion of sonship
of Christ. The first, “command this stone to become bread”, addresses the realm
of our bodily needs. We know what hunger
is, have experienced it directly or indirectly. The invitation addressed to
Christ by satan was to reduce his divine sonship to self-sufficiency, to instrumentalize
his power for immediate relief. Jesus replied relying on the Word of God from
the book of Deuteronomy: “One does not live by bread alone.” The issue at steak
here is not bread versus spirit, but provision versus possession. Life is
sustained not only by what we secure but by what we receive. Fasting during
Lent become intelligible, not simply as a denial of the body (because some
people do fast for non-spiritual and religious reasons like those who want to lose
weight, etc.), but for a reordering of our human desire so that our needs do
not tyrannize our trust in GOD.
The second temptation,
concerns authority over “all the kingdoms of the world.” It shifts the
attention from survival connected to biological needs to dominion as spiritual
need. Here the seduction is political and expansive; it aims to achieve the
good by seizing control, by passing the slow obedience of love through the
immediacy of what is spectacular and through coercion. The devil’s logic is always
the same; it’s the logic of the “end justifies the means”, compromising faithfulness
in God and His commandments for human and vain glory.
Jesus’ response is illuminating:
“Worship the Lord your God and serve him only”. The worship of God is not
simply liturgical rites; it has to do fundamentally with our existential
orientation. To adore God alone (as demanded in Deuteronomy 6: 4-8) is to
resist the absolutizing of any lesser power, including one’s own capacity to
influence events. Lent’s practice of Prayer, Almsgiving help us resist this temptation.
It helps us loose the grip of our will to dominate and redirects our hearts
toward reverence of God our Creator.
The 3rd temptation,
“Throw yourself down from here,” is the most subtle of all.
It is clothed in spiritual citation. This is a warning to us to know that the
devil knows how to twist the truth, make his lie look like truth, appear
attractive. It is a religious distortion that seeks to compel God to act,
convert our trust into proof of God’s providence and protection and even
transforming faith into a staged demonstration of power. We see this today in
so many pseudo-prophets that stage “miracle” to glorify themselves and deceive
uninformed crowds, and their followers.
Jesus replies also saying: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Authentic trust in God
does not seek to manipulate. God wants us to confide in Him,
abandon ourselves to His eternal Will. Believing in God implies taking risks to
stand for the truth, to speak out for the poor and marginalize. This makes us
vulnerable. Lent’s invitation to deeper
silence and examen can be read here as a schooling in non-presumptive faith,
where God is neither doubted nor coerced but awaited.
Highlighting the secret
of Jesus’ victory over satan: What is striking across
the three replies is Jesus’ mode of victory. He does not argue from private
insight or sheer resolve but from the remembered Word. Scripture functions not
as a weaponized text but as our source of fidelity, our weapon to unmask the
strategies of the devil. In the desert, Jesus inhabits Israel’s story so
completely that temptation is answered from within covenant memory. For us Christians
entering Lent, this suggests that our resilience is cultivated less by the quantity
of Lenten decision we take than by depth of rootedness, by dwelling in the Word
until it becomes the reflex of the heart. It is by relying on the WORD OF GOD
that we can defeat the enemy. This is the reason why we need to know the Word of
God, allow it to dwell in our hearts.
St Luke concludes the
episode with a very sobering note : the devil departs “until an opportune time.”
Temptation is not a single episode we overcome once for all ; it is a recurring
dimension of discipleship. The desert experience has already disclosed the
pattern of endurance we should follow : being receptive to God’s word and not being
self-sufficiency, worshiping God without compromise, and putting our whole
trust in God. Lent offers us the opportunity to rediscover our areas of temptation
and confront them head on.
To follow Christ into
Lent is to consent to a reeducation of our desire and commitment, to allow the
Spirit to lead us into places where our dependencies, ambitions, and anxieties
are named without disguise. The wilderness, paradoxically, becomes a place of
grace, where the believer learns again that life is gift, that God alone is
God, and that trust need not prove itself to be real.
May God help us live a fruitful Lent of conversion of heart for move fraternity among us🙏🙏🙏
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