March 16, 2003

The forty days of Lent are based on our Lord’s stark forty days in the wilderness where He was tempted by Satan. He was “led up by the Spirit,” which means that in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, it was the divine will that Christ should confront Satan.

Satan is not divine and he only has power over us that we permit him to have through human weakness, or when God wills it for his own purposes as in the forty days when Christ confronts the Anti-Christ. Satan is “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness until the judgment of the great day (Jude: 6).”

Satan, his intelligence being imperfect since he fell, senses that Jesus is divine but tests Him to find out. These “temptations” are different, then, from the temptations that assault us in our weakness. They are “tests” to discern Christ’s essence. Thus the Muslims are mistaken when they argue that, since God cannot be tempted, the temptations of Jesus prove He is not divine. God in Christ, “led up by the Spirit” endures these tests as a sign of his power to save the world.

Satan first tempts Christ with materialism, “turning stones to bread.” The second temptation to fly is the seduction of the illusions of the mind, and this includes all false philosophies and ideologies that deny the truth of God. Satan twice probes by saying, “If you are the Son of God.” In the third temptation, he does not say that because he masquerades as God himself, tempting Christ to atheism. An atheist does not disbelieve in God; he thinks that he is a god, and that was the original temptation of the human race. At this point, Christ unmasks his Tempter and calls him by name: “Satan.”

Satan tried to destroy Christ in his infancy in Bethlehem, in the wilderness, and finally in the Garden of Olives. Each time angels ministered to Jesus. These are the pure and obedient spirits, whose glory must be forever the agony of Satan who lost that splendor through pride.

None of this is fantasy. It is being suffered now in our Church and nation, which are under various assaults. Christ does not conquer evil by miraculous works; He performed those only out of compassion for the sick and as signs of heaven. He conquers sin and death by being perfect and yet suffering the consequences of imperfection. St. Augustine says, “The Devil was to be overcome not by the Power of God but by righteousness.”

St. Hilary advises: “The temptations of the Devil assail those principally who are sanctified, for he desires, above all, to overcome the Holy.” It is a back-handed compliment that Satan pays the Catholic Church. “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (James 1:2-3).”

Fr. George W. Rutler