First Reading: Deuteronomy 26:4-10

Epistle: Romans 10:8-13

Gospel: Luke 4:1-13

In his comedy The Merchant of Venice, crypto-Catholic playwright William Shakespeare observed, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose./An evil soul producing holy witness/Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,/A goodly apple rotten at the heart.” (I.iii.99-103) It is ironic that Shakespeare puts these words in the mouth of the ostensible antagonist Shylock, who is Jewish, and therefore only recognizes the Old Testament as his Bible, because the example par excellence of this phenomenon is found in this Sunday’s Gospel reading.

The Glory of These Forty Days

The time spent by Jesus in the wilderness is the reason that our penitential observance of the season of Lent is forty days long. In the Bible, a period of forty days (or years) is always connected with punishment and purgation of sin and sometimes with repentance. It rained for forty days and nights to cause the flood which removed sin from the earth. In the Torah, forty days after the birth of her son, a woman can undergo a ritual purification so that she worship in the Tabernacle and later the Temple again. When the prophet Jonah was sent by God to Nineveh with the warning ““Yet forty days, and Nin′eveh shall be overthrown!” (3:4) Most notably, of course, are the forty days spent by the Israelites wandering in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land. They were not lost. Rather, God had condemned all but Caleb and Joshua to die in the desert because they had rebelled against him by murmuring about the lack of food and water, worshipping the Golden Calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai (for, again, forty days) receiving the Law from God and finally for refusing to actually enter the Promised Land and take it after spying it out (for...you guessed it...forty days) out of the fear of its inhabitants.

Deuteronomy

This is in fact the context of the book of Deuteronomy, from which the First Reading is taken. In Deuteronomy, Moses is delivering his final oration before his death, as the children of the original Israelites who left Egypt are about to enter the Promised Land. Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Pentateuch, also known as the Torah and traditionally referred to as the “books of Moses.” Modern scholars and other scoffers will often point out that Moses could not have written the book because it includes a record of his death. Nevertheless, even if he did not physically write it, it is almost entirely his words, perhaps recorded by an aide after the fact such as Joshua. At any rate, the setting of Deuteronomy provides the connection, at first not readily apparent, between the First Reading and Gospel.  

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

It is no accident that Jesus begins His public ministry immediately after overcoming the temptations by Satan in the desert. As in all things he does, Satan can only act with permission and will of God. Jesus “filled with the Holy Spirit” (4:1) after His baptism “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the Devil.” Undergoing temptation was meant to strengthen Jesus for His mission but it was also an important part of it. This is not the Adversary attacking the incarnate but Son of God, but very much the other way around. God the Father has just announced who exactly Jesus is and now Jesus enters the wilderness, often considered to be the abode of devils, to combat Satan. Like Aragorn unfurling his royal standard and riding to battle the forces of the Dark Lord Sauron, Our Lord is taking the battle to the Enemy. He is putting the Devil on notice that his kingdom and dominion of the Earth is about to come to an end as the true and rightful King has arrived. By observing the penitential season of Lent, we follow His example. The Collect for Ash Wednesday describes the forty days of Lent as a “campaign of Christian service.” This is not service as in the work of a slave (Latin: servus) or service but military service in the army of Jesus Christ the King.

The First Temptations of Christ

For his part, the Devil knows exactly who Jesus is. He is not trying to “figure out” Our Lord’s identity with his temptations nor is he trying to debt Our Lord to doubt His messianic mission and identity. He knows that is impossible but this is the same “ancient Serpent” described in the book of Genesis as “the most subtle of all creatures.” (3:1) His temptations play to the root of almost all sin, which caused his own fall: pride. By saying, “If you are the Son of God…” the Accuser is trying to goad Our Lord into proving who He is by using His divine power in a ways that subtly subvert His messianic mission.

The first temptation is for Our Lord to use His divine power for his own benefit. Our Lord is fully human as well as fully divine and St. Luke tells us that He had been fasting for forty days so “He was hungry” (probably a massive understatement). Satan’s temptation is for Our Lord to use His powers in way that does not further His mission, but only fulfills His own needs. Our Lord knows this and refuses.

The parallel accounts of this event in the other Synoptic Gospels have the second temptation as the final temptation. On the surface, this makes sense, as this temptation has Satan offer “all the kingdoms of the world” to Our Lord if He but worships Satan. This seems to be a far greater offense than either of the other temptations. St. Luke’s account of the temptation of Our Lord contains two of the three most chilling phrases in all of Scripture, one of which are Satan’s words here:  “for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.” Although Satan is a liar, these words are true. In Gospel according to St. John, Our Lord thrice refers to the Devil as “the prince (or ruler, depending on the translation) of this world” But, of course, Jesus is the true King and the whole purpose of His coming is reclaim the world from Satan, who is a usurper and pretender.

Nevertheless, St. Luke’s order of the temptations makes sense in that not only is the final one the most subtle but in it Satan also attempts to quote Scripture to support his claim. The core of this temptation is for Our Lord to demonstrate His power in a dramatic, undeniable way with many witnesses. It is subtle because unlike the previous two, it appears to further Our Lord’s messianic mission. Surely, being seen carried by angels after leaping from the pinnacle of the Temple would cause a messianic claimant to swiftly gain many followers. But again, this is not the purpose of Our Lord’s miracles nor His mission. All of Our Lord’s miracles from the wedding feast of Cana to healing the ear of Malchus in Gethsemane somehow helped other people. Our Lord’s powers are for His people. Thus, is it any wonder that Our Lord urges those He heals to keep His “messianic secret” and when they try to make Him a king, He flees?

Acedia

Ironically, the verse Satan cites is taken from the Ninety-First Psalm. As we hear in today’s Responsorial, the verse immediately following states, “You shall tread upon the asp and the viper, you shall trample the lion and the dragon.” (91:13) The fifth chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter compares “your adversary the Devil” to “a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (5:8)   Thus, all these animals are seen as symbols of the Devil which he is described as or to which he is compared in Scripture. Moreover, in the portion of the Psalm omitted from the Responsorial, the Psalmist sings, “You will not fear the terror of the night…nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.” (91:5-6) When St. Jerome translate this psalm in the Vulgate, he rendered the phrase as daemonum merdiano, which is translated in the Douay-Rheims as “noonday devil.” Exorcists have identified the noonday devil as the demon who drives the vice of acedia. Although acedia is often used as simply a synonym for sloth, it is more accurately described as hagistania, Greek for an exhaustion or tiredness of holy (hagia) things. What better vice to sabotage our efforts for a holy Lent, during which time Holy Mother Church calls us to renew our disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. None of these things are easy, and acedia would have us grow tired of doing them or settle for just doing the bare minimum, and half-heartedly at that.

Redo in the Desert

Finally, it must be pointed out that Our Blessed Lord responds to all of Satan’s temptations with quotes from Scripture. It is in the final temptation that Satan attempts to turn this back on Our Lord by quoting Scripture, but He has a rebuttal. Not only does Our Lord quote Scripture, but He quotes one book: Deuteronomy, the one from which the First Reading is taken. Our Lord’s responses to the second and third temptations You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test and You shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him alone shall you serve are the thirteenth and sixteenth verses, respectively of the sixth chapter while his first reply One does not live on bread alone is the third verse of the eighth chapter. In a way, Our Lord, the rightful king of Israel by virtue of his Davidic descent, is recapitulating the failures of His People in the wilderness in his confrontation with Satan. The Israelites demanded bread in the wilderness (Exodus 16:1-36), worshipped first an idolatrous representation of the true God in the form of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32:1-20) and later the false god Ba-al of Peor (Numbers 25:1-8) and finally, after initially refusing to attempt to take the Promised Land, gathered an armed force to take it but were massacred by the Amalekites and Canaanites because the LORD was not with them (Numbers 14:1-45).

Our Lord, the New Moses, whose Hebrew name is actually the same as Joshua, overcomes these temptations and wins a first victory against the Devil. At the end of these forty days, we shall celebrate the culmination of His victory, a new Passover and Exodus from sin. Let us pray that He shall grant us the grace to follow His example well this Lent and that one day, we may follow him out of this desert and “vale of tears” to the heavenly Promised Land.