Temptation of Christ 1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came and said to him: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. 4 Jesus answered, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
5 The devil taketh him up into the holy city, placed on top of the temple 6 and said: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written: 'He will command his angels charge concerning thee: and they shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
7 Jesus said to him: On the other hand it is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God
8 The devil taketh him again on a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9 and it says: I'll give you all this, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Jesus said to him: Begone Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and him alone shall you worship.
11 Then the devil left. And behold, angels came to Jesus to serve him.
Jesus did not escape the temptation. He was tempted and the tempter did not have the best of him. If
Jesus escaped this also means that it is possible for our turn not to succumb to temptation. If Jesus had not stumbled when evil attacked him, he certainly will be a profound relief for us when we suffer the effects of temptation. And the temptation we face continually.
Presented as it is, the text leads us to imagine I do not know what heroic struggle worthy of a major Hollywood production, where the Son of God would fight the devil physically. Such a description fits the style of the era. We must overcome if we are to understand something.
In fact the text was not written to speak to our imagination. This is our reason he intended. It challenges us in our faith. He invites us to consider our life taking into account all the situations where we ourselves are tempted. We are told that Jesus also endured the same hardships, so it is particularly suited to help us. The trials that lie ahead are of three kinds.
- They primarily concern place our material worries, because we would like for God to turn the odds in our favor.
- They provoke us into second point in our relationship to God. We would like
that distinguishes us one way or another and that we reserve a special case.
- They then challenge us in our desire for power, because we too are beings of power.
Although the decor is appropriate, here we are not witnessing a battle of Titan that Jesus would lead against the prince of demons. In a scene worthy of a great peplum we see Jesus faced the same difficulties than those we encounter in life. That's the way the author of the Gospel has chosen to tell us that Jesus faithfully support us in all temptations because he too suffered before us. It also tells us how to recognize the will of God in the choices or provocations that life offers us.
What I want to emphasize is that this is not Jesus's fight against the devil and who certifies as Son of God, which is important is how Jesus faces this temptation and who certifies as Son of man. In this capacity it can present itself as a partner that God places on our way to help us overcome our temptations and to stand before God, standing as responsible beings.
The man Jesus is tempted as any of us, in its needs and desires. The first temptation is its material needs. He's hungry. he needs bread, "Tell these stones to become bread" recommends the tempter. Jesus is tempted to act as if hunger could justify the means. He is tempted to succumb to the inevitability of the need and appropriate the bread he needs without worrying about that it is not acquiring what we need, without observing certain rules. We do not blackmail God on behalf of our human reason.
So we slip quietly from the temptation of Jesus to our own. Here we returned to our situation of consumers. It does not consume at any cost, even when you can pay, because everything must be done in reference to God. That's what Jesus says in its response to the devil when he says that we must seek God alone in the cause of our action. "Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." This means that the smallest of our actions can not be done without having taken the time to consult God.
It is God who values things. And there are things which God before taking a different price. It seems that the bread of the poor is one of those things there. The bread that we believe today is sometimes legitimately eat the bitter taste of things that have too much value or that are priceless, so much so that you can feel guilty when we consomme0t. What good would it do us to consume if it pushes us away from God and get away from men? And the whole consumer society that is at stake.
The second temptation would be for Jesus to seek the help of angels, if perchance he had the nerve to jump off the roof of the Temple This is to put God in the service of our irresponsibility in the guise of faith. Building on the principle that salvation is given us by grace and by grace alone, we would live in a world where we hunt God. On behalf of the principle I just mentioned, we hope it will save all men at last day regardless of their sin.
So many around us, who call themselves believers live by this principle and deviate from God all their life while hoping he will take on everyone hello at the end of time? Suffice to say it would be more honest to make no case for him and behave as if there were not this would not it be more honest and does not it make men more responsible? But such an assertion would seem to them intolerable because it would make them atheists. To p &'ve come here, they prefer to continue to tempt God by depriving him of their prayers, their praise and worship them, hoping that in the end He will not forget.
There is a third temptation that we think most easily escape is that of power and abuse of power. Although few of us indeed do not seek to be part of the elite and dominate others. But is it true that we are so disinterested by the power conferred by money and it does not fascinate us? What freedom do we have in relation to money and power he gives us to eat? Let us know what we earn or what we have available to the glory of God, or rather do we begin to make available to us and enjoy what is known as purchasing power?
Purchasing power is power qui nous permet de consommer, c’est le pouvoir que nous donne l’argent ! C’était déjà le sujet de la première tentation et c’est ce qui nous permet de croire en consommant, que Dieu justifie notre bon droit et nous donne bonne conscience, c’était aussi la deuxième tentation.
Ces trois formes de tentations se rejoignent car elles consistent toutes les trois à satisfaire notre égo et à le mettre en valeur. La tentation suprême sera donc de croire que Dieu y trouve son compte, parce que nous nous permettons au nom de notre pouvoir d’achat de faire des générosités pour lesquels nous cherchons à croire que nous sommes capables d’échapper à selfishness that is blamed for others to emerge. What should you do? Retreat into a monastery and live poverty and prayer. We know that it was useless to Luther. He needed to breathe air that is why he felt the need to confront the temptations of life in order to exist.
God is not satisfied with our guilt-which consist of attitudes, on the pretext of pleasing him, to always reduce and never to promote! This would be yet another temptation to believe that we could please God by sacrificing ourselves in defiance of our personal values where God needs to enhance its inception. It is wrong to believe that God asks us to always belittle us, to give up any power and does not take the money we earn.
He put us wise enough to discern that we know where the truth about ourselves. Nothing can happen without due respect we have consulted.
is in contact as we learn to distinguish right from wrong and that we act with the risk of deceiving ourselves. The worst temptation is to believe that we are not beings of discernment and that we are unable to make sense of things and to distinguish right from wrong. It is possible, but on one condition: the constant presence of God in our life Our life can be in harmony with it only if we take the time to conduct our lives wisely and make our decisions under his gaze. That is a whole art is to live the Gospel. It took 3 years for Jesus to teach men, how long will it to each of them to understand?
illustrations John Flanders
