First Sunday Of Lent, Year C--Assume The Power, The Devil Told Him

Satan tries to drive a wedge between Jesus and his Father.

“If you are the Son of God,” Satan begins two his temptations. Same with us, with baptism, “If you are a child of God.” Doubting baptismal identity. Lent is a time of self-appraisal and accountability. When we remember and reflect on our Baptism.

Baptism as new birth implies continued fidelity by obedience to God’s will. Romans 10:9 from Our Second Reading alludes to an early baptismal formula, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

“The evil spirit sows doubt and deception. It is as though it whispers, “If others really knew you,… If they saw the real you…You do not belong.” 1

Humility is one virtue that no demon can imitate.

E.g., The First Reading from Deuteronomy 26:5, God is telling us to lead with our weakness to get his help. “You shall declare before the Lord, your God, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean… went to Egypt…small household …an alien… maltreated and oppressed… hard labor upon us...”

Once you admit to your inner most self that your’e an alcoholic, that your, etc. – you can’t “un-admit” that. Once you get completely honest and tell the truth –then God’s grace enters in.

Intelligence can make us blind by too much self-confidence… and disaster through too much presumption.

Notice that Christ “answers the devil only with biblical quotations [which] is the origin of the tradition according to which we should not argue with the tempter, who is always a better sophist than we are.”2

A talkative soul will never attain sanctity, St. Faustina says.

1). In the first temptation, Jesus answered Satan in Luke 4:4, “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”

This is about the senses, to make it the center of one’s life, pleasures. Hedonists and libertines.

Sensuality, particularly, excesses at table, gourmet tastes, gluttony. Classical texts in the Greco-Roman world like the epicures describe those who are enslaved to the belly.

Jeremiah 51:44 and 51:34-54 mentions gluttony and the god-Bel in Babylon.

The Church Fathers- some saw idolatry in luxurious eating and drink.

Titus 1:12, they “live to eat.”

3 Mac. 7:11, a historical text, Jewish apostates sinned because, “for the belly’s sake transgressed the divine commandments.”3

Philippians 3:19 says their god is their belly. They worship their stomachs. Cyclops said, “I offer sacrifice …to this belly of mind, the greatest of deities.”4

1 Corinthians 6:13 says food for the stomach and the stomach for food, perhaps parallel to “the body for fornication.”5

(2) In the second temptation, the devil said to Jesus, “I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.”

‘Assume the power,’ the devil told him; that power that gives the illusion of disrupting and dominating everything. But [Christ] remained within the limits.”6

Milton, in Paradise Lost, invents a troubling dream of Eve, in which Satan circumvents her defenses while she is not on guard in her sleep. This is what English commentators call “the fall before the Fall,” a wounding of her imagination, which will render her capable of a fall, … one of Evil’s greatest seductions is to fascinate us (even in the horror and anguish we have of it) and, to stun us (in the strict sense).7

St. Gregory the Great describes internal temptations like this: “an image or fantasy is presented to me (suggestio), I take more or less pleasure in a given instance considering it and playing with it (delectatio), I then consent to what it invites of me and act on it (consensus).”8

(3) In the third temptation, the devil says: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you, and: With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”

Satan misapplies Scripture and Jesus answers with the correct Scripture.

“Do you reject the glamour of evil?” that was part of the older form of the renewal of baptismal promises.

Evil, according to Augustine and Aquinas, is wholly parasitic on the good. For the Christian, a way out is to remember the last four things are: death, judgement, heaven, and hell.

1 John 2:16 says, “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. So, temptation is a conflict or test of desires.”