To be tempted by the devil

SUNDAY 1 MARCH (Mt 4,1-11)

The Lord always tests the truth of our love and our fidelity to the word given to him. But to the test temptation is always added on the part of Satan. Temptation has only one purpose: free ourselves from any bond of obedience with our God. Thus the Book of Sirach: “My son, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity. Cling to him, forsake him not; thus will your future be great. Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient; For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation. Trust God and he will help you; make straight your ways and hope in him” (Sir 2,1-6). There is no man on earth who lives without temptation. Satan wants to lead everyone into eternal perdition and uses every temptation to drag the man to his side.

Besides being true God, Jesus is also a true man. Through his humanity he must work the redemption of humanity. For this he must be pure, holy and without blemish. He must never know sin, that is, disobedience to the will of his Father. Satan comes and tempts him so that he separates himself from the Father, leaves his bosom, lives without any connection with him, gives his messianism human and not divine contents, of the earth and not of heaven, for the world and not for his Father. This passage from the supernatural to the natural, from the transcendent to the immanent, from God to man, from Heaven to the earth, today is leading the children of the Church to lose their identity. Satan has succeeded in convincing many disciples of Jesus that everything is indifferent and all the same: God and Satan are one and the same. Heaven and hell the same thing. There is no Satan. There is no hell. Faith in Christ Jesus and faith in a nameless and faceless God are the same thing. Christ Jesus is not needed to religion or even to salvation. Every man is already saved. Jesus did not fall into this temptation. He remained anchored, bound, cemented and welded to the will of his Father. He remained in the bosom of the Father. He never came out of it, not even for a single instant or moment. He overcame Satan.

Then 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. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” 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.'” Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, 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.'” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.'” Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” 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.'” Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.

The Lord is tempted whenever we want his intervention of salvation against his Word, his will and against his Commandment. Faith is the delivery of life to the Word of God: “O come, let us sing for joy to the Lord, Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God And a great King above all gods, In whose hand are the depths of the earth, The peaks of the mountains are His also. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, And His hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.  For He is our God, And we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you would hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, As in the day of Massah in the wilderness, “When your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work. “For forty years I loathed that generation, And said they are a people who err in their heart, And they do not know My ways. “Therefore I swore in My anger, Truly they shall not enter into My rest” ” (Ps 95 (94) 1-11). Jesus places himself entirely in the will of the Father and obeys every Word written for Him.

Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us true listeners of the Word of Jesus.