A contemplative-in-action that he was, Jesus would regularly go to the desert for total silence and solitude, after days and weeks of apostolic teaching and activities, moved by divine love and compassion. Early on, after he asked to be baptized by John, he even went to the desert and fasted for forty days and nights. You can imagine how hungry and weak the human Jesus was. It was then that he went through the triple temptation from the devil. The temptation to materialism. The temptation to spiritual arrogance. The temptation to Satanic discipleship. All this is found in today’s Gospel reading, Mt. 4:1-11.
The temptation to materialism. The devil went close to Jesus and said, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread,†(v.3) what an attractive temptation, indeed, at the height of Jesus’ bodily hunger. And being truly the Son of God, he could easily have done it to appease his physical hunger. But instead, he answered back and said, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’†(v.4). His answer was not just for his own sake, but for all of us. Our oneness with God is the primary and final reality of our lives. “In God we live and move and have our being.†(Acts 17:28). But a major tragedy in today’s world is the focus on our ego and the ego-centered, materialistic, Godless culture. The media, and not the human-divine Jesus, has become the guide and the god of the lives and lifestyles of so many of our people.
Here was a couple who bought another car instead of sending their housemaid’s two teenagers to school, which she could not afford, especially because she is already a widow. And what about that pork barrel scam, and so many other similar sins and crimes of Satanic materialism and power?
The temptation to spiritual arrogance. Today’s Gospel continues with Jesus being invited by the devil to stand on the parapet of the temple in the holy city, and challenged 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.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’†(vv.6-7)
Indeed, all this is very meaningful to all of us who are God’s disciples. Human as we are, there is a tendency to believe that our salvation is certain through our external good works and acts of penance, especially during the Season of Lent, which starts today. But the external cannot be focused on apart from the internal, which is one’s inner conversion of love and faith in the Lord. As the spiritual writer William Maestri puts it: “We can come to believe that the mere performance of deeds is sufficient without an inner openness to grace. Also, there is a danger that we come to believe we are self-saved by our good works and penance. We come to believe that we have saved ourselves. We boast. We believe that God owes us heaven. Such spiritual arrogance can never be condoned and must always be held in check.†(From Grace Upon Grace).
The real answer is one’s authentic love, from head to heart to feet, as a response to being loved by God. And since God’s love is unconditional, so must ours be. This means the giving of one’s total self to God and to all others, as Jesus did --- through thick and thin, joy and pain, success and failure, laughter and tears, all the way to the end of one’s life, which is the beginning of the eternal one.
The temptation to Satanic discipleship. After the first two failures, the devil did not give up but led Jesus to a very high mountain, and from there, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in their worldly magnificence and power. “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.†At this point, Jesus gave it to the devil and said: “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’†(vv.8-10). And Jesus lived this to the very end of his mortal life.
This, too, is our mission and challenge in our own lives. To grow in awareness of God’s spiritual presence as our constant companion and develop a deeper awareness of our oneness with God. Let us repeat here what we quoted above: “In God we live and move and have our being.†And as Albert Nolan describes so well in his book, Jesus Today, our oneness with God leads us to our oneness with ourselves, with other human beings, and with the universe. This is what Jesus experienced, and this is what he passed on to us. No less than unity in diversity. Pope Francis refers to it as global solidarity. In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, he emphasizes on a commitment to ecumenism as well as interreligious dialogue. Love over dogma.
But side by side with all this, we must be constantly aware of the active presence of Satan and his cohorts. Let us be actively united in a spirituality of resistance against the anti-God culture of egoism, materialism, consumerism, sexual immorality, and social injustice.
Jesus, continue to lead us without end, Amen.
H