You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve

 

 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.  Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."  But He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

 

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down.  For it is written:

'He shall give His angels charge over you,'

and, 

 'In their hands they shall bear you up,

Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'" 

Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"

 

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.   And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me."  Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan!  For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"  Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him. 

 

- Matthew 4:1-11

 

 On Saturday, we read about the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.  And John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I need to be baptized by You, and are You coming to me?"  But Jesus answered and said to him, "Permit it to be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."  Then he allowed Him.  When He had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him.  And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

 

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. My study Bible explains that to be tempted is to be tested in fundamental areas of faith.  As in St. Mark's Gospel, here the Spirit leads, or "throws," Jesus into the wilderness after His Baptism to be tested by a struggle with the devil.  We who are baptized in Christ, it says, need not be defeated by temptations because we are also aided by the Holy Spirit.  Here the wilderness is a battleground, an image of the world.  That is, it is both the dwelling place of demons and a source of divine tranquility and victory. 

 

 And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.  My study Bible reminds us that the Israelites were tested forty years in the wilderness and proved disobedient and disloyal.  God humbled them by first letting them go hungry and then feeding them with manna to help them learn to be dependent upon God (Deuteronomy 8:2-5).  In today's reading, my study Bible says, Jesus is tested with hunger for forty days, but He does not sin.  In reading the passage, let us keep in mind that all of Christ's answers to Satan are from Deuteronomy, and they are all calling for loyalty to God.  My study Bible adds that Jesus fasted in order to overcome temptation, which gives us an example of our own power and limitations in the face of temptation.  The hunger of Christ's flesh doesn't control Him.  Instead, He controls His flesh.  Christ's fast of forty days is the foundation of the Church's traditional practice of a Lenten fast before Holy Week, and also before Christmas.

 

 Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."  It's important to note that the bedrock of all things is our love of God who loves us.  Here, the devil begins with a challenge of Christ's relationship to the Father.  He says, "If You are the Son of God" in order to call into question the Father's declaration at Jesus' Baptism (see Saturday's reading, above, in which the voice of the Father declares, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased").  My study Bible says that the devil wants Jesus to act independently and to detach Himself from the will of the Father.  In Christ's divine nature, He shares one will with the Father and the Holy Spirit; He can do nothing of Himself (John 5:30), apart from God the Father.  But in Christ's humanity, He has free will, and at all times must choose to remain obedient to the divine will of the Father. 

 

  But He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"  In rejecting this first temptation, Jesus is rejecting a purely worldly perspective and shows us not to pursue earthly comfort in the "food which perishes" (John 6:27).  In the poetry of the Bible, we see that Adam disregarded the divine word in order to pursue the passions of the Body (Genesis 3), and here the New Adam -- Jesus Christ -- conquers all temptation by the divine word, giving human nature the power to conquer Satan.  

 

 Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down.  For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and,  'In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.'"   The holy city is Jerusalem.  Here the devil tries a trick; as Jesus was able to defeat him through the power of Scripture in the first temptation above, now the devil tries to use Scripture to put God's power of protection to the test.  See also 2 Peter 1:19-21.  

 

 Jesus said to him, "It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'"  Jesus responds by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:16.  My study Bible comments that trials and temptations come on their own; we should never intentionally expose ourselves to danger in order to test or prove God's protection.  To do so is to tempt the LORD. 

 

 Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.   And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me."  Then Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan!  For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"  Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.   My study Bible reminds us here that God's Kingdom is not one of earthly power and possessions.  In the devil's test, Jesus was being asked to choose worldly power over the Kingdom of God.  The devil is the "ruler of this world" (John 12:31), "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), because the whole world is in his power (1 John 5:19).  Here Jesus refuses this road of earthly glory, which would lead Him away from His suffering and death for the redemption of the world.  

 

Let us note that the last verse in today's reading tells us that then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.   It illustrates this nature of the wilderness in which we find ourselves.  There is tremendous beauty of God, there is the defeat in the temptations of the devil, high and low, exalted and debased.  We have saints and angels with us, we have the devil and the fallen demons who tempt us.  We are in the middle of a battleground, as my study Bible puts it, and when we forget that this is where we are, we forget what we are meant to be about.  Fasting is a practice in which we meet our temptations, as does Jesus here.  For each person, the temptations will vary, but if you ask a priest listening to confession, they are so often the same old things, just varying in pattern and details of a person's particular life experience.  We should say, to begin with, that fasting in the Christian context is not about going on a diet, not about willpower, not just about self-discipline in some athletic or stoic sense.  Neither is it about morality.  Fasting is something we do with God and for God; it is a way of both showing love and commitment to God (to Christ), and at the same time struggling against our own temptations to take shortcuts, to think it doesn't matter, to think of ourselves simply as thinking machines with bodies irrelevant to faith and to love of Christ and separated from our minds and hearts.  Fasting reminds us that we are all of a whole:  body, soul, and spirit, for it involves all.  When we fast we do it to shore up and rely upon that relationship to God, to understand that our dependency upon God gives us strength to rise above the worldly exigencies that press in upon us and to meet them the way God would ask us to, not imply to be controlled by them.  Fasting in this sense helps us to say "no" to the rest of things we need to discern and reject, and to say "yes" to what we need for our true strength and growth and development.  In that sense, all the disciplines in the Church are meant to help us to grow in our own identity as human beings, to come to know what it is to be formed and shaped by Christ to become more like Him, and to meet the challenges of bearing our own crosses in the world.  Let us note first of all that it is the Holy Spirit who leads Christ up into the wilderness to face these temptations.  This is preparation for His ministry to come.  When Jesus resists temptation in today's reading, He's doing several things we can observe.  First of all, He's setting limits on the devil, on what the devil can tempt Him to do, and on the devil's presumption to ensnare Him in his power, like a slave.  He defeats the devil by saying no to the temptations presented.  And Jesus does more than that.  He sets down the rules by which He needs to live His life, and carry out His ministry in the world.  When we say no to temptation, we are doing the same.  We are setting up our own protective boundaries, a fence that lines the road we intend to follow for not just our own good but for the life of the world, in following Christ.  We have the power to resist temptation and choose the path of Christ instead.  Faith practices such as fasting help us to mark that clear delineation and to know, as my study Bible says, that we have the power to do so, exercising and developing that strength in Christ through faith.  When we go through periods of testing and temptation, when we feel sorely pressed and without resource, let us remember what we read here, that Christ is with us, and angels minister to us, and that through our faith we have the power to say no to what is not good for us, the things that lead us away from God, the phony temptations that sound good but are a snare.  Let us remember that sin easily leads to our own slavery; as anyone struggling with addiction of any kind -- including to material wealth, power, or anything else we make into an idol.  Every false consolation leads us to a degraded and weak condition, and takes away from our humanity, what we can be as human beings created in the image of God.  Let us take heart and be like Christ, and follow Him.   He puts His relationship with God the Father first; let's remember where our love belongs and the One who will teach us more of love.