The Temptation

Continuing Fouard's Life of Christ:

Chapter III: The Temptation

Matt. iv. 1-11; Mark I. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1-13.

The Holy Spirit had rested upon Jesus, not only to bear witness outwardly to the grace which abounded within Him, but to exercise an active influence over Him.  And therefore, so soon as the Christ had received this consecration, He was "led by the Spirit," Saint Matthew recounts; "impelled," says Saint Luke; "thrust out," “borne away, driven "into the desert," according to Saint Mark.  The energy of the terms chosen by the Evangelists plainly indicates that though the Spirit of God never failed to guide the steps of the Saviour, yet there was, here and now, a more sensible and lively motion than was customary up on the part of the Holy Ghost.

Mons Quarantania, north-west of Jericho. Public domain.

Mount Quarantania, Arabic name: Jabal al-Quruntul, from its Crusader name, Mons Quarantania, a mountain approximately 366 metres (1,201 ft) high, towering from the northwest over the town of Jericho in the West Bank.Halfway up to the top of the mount is the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Temptation or "Deir al-Qarantal" in Arabic.

Intrusting Himself to this Divine Compulsion the Lord went up into the desert.  By this name all the traditions understand a certain hill to the west of Jericho, which now bears the name of the Fortieth (Quarantine), in memory of the Fasting of Jesus, rising above the Fountain of Eliseus, its sides all honeycombed with caves.  Long ago, whole communities of hermits dwelt there, anxious to lead their solitary life in imitation of their Redeemer, in the very spot where He consecrated, by His example, the way of abstinence and prayer.

But no monastic discipline ever equalled in austerity the penance done by Jesus; for it was in the midst of winter that he buried himself in that retreat, at a time when the wilderness is more desolate than ever, the very skies are pitiless, and the trees are bare of fruit, and stripped of their leafy screens.  Here He abode in an entire solitude, "alone with the wild beasts," surrounded by lions and leopards, which lurk in the thickets of the Jordan, amid the jackals whose mournful howling is still heard among the mountains.  And they harmed Him not; for the creatures are but armed against the sinful race, and the Holiness of Jesus held absolute sway over their savage natures.

But it was to attain far other triumphs than these that the Saviour had gone up into the desert.  He had come hither that He might be tempted.  The New Adam, He was come to take up the combat at the point where the first had failed and fled, and to turn defeat into victory.  Yet what manner of trial was this with which He must needs make issue?  Must we really, with the rationalists, treat it all as a vision, in which the Christ, like the heroes of ancient fable, was given to choose between the paths of Virtue and of Vice?  Did the Saviour, in relating His Temptation two His disciples, represent it as being merely an allegory?  There is nothing in the Gospels to suggest such a thought; and it is only by the preconceived idea of stripping the scene of everything marvellous that one can be brought to consider it otherwise than as an actual happening.

However it is a profitless effort at best; for what astounds us in the inspired record is not so much the wonders wrought, then and there, as it is the simple fact of a the God being tempted.  Theology has no problem to offer as requiring more delicate discrimination in its solution.  Could the world have any thing wherewith to seduce a Divine Nature?  Where was the merit in such a victory for a Soul which could not sin? At every step the mind must halt before the brink of an abyss, and of necessity we must acknowledge that here the mystery of the Incarnation presents one of its features which still remains shrouded in deepest obscurity to mortal ken.

Without pretending to illuminate those infinite depths, we ought to make it clearly understood, however, that the greatest difficulty comes from the idea, ordinary entertained, that the Temptation of Jesus was like to ours.  There is scarcely any appetite for evil in us which does not leave some traces of its passage through our souls.  Let the wretched thought be as swift as may be, the first movement of the heart is too often as if she would detain it.  There was nought of this in Jesus; for having taken no part in the perversion of our humanity, he could not know those desires which awake within us without our consent, and which are nevertheless our own, because we can detect therein either the promptings of past faults, or the seed sown by inherent concupiscence.  Jesus was but tempted outwardly, by an imagery and eloquence appealing most strikingly to the senses, yet without the possibility of such attractions hurting His Soul or staining it.  If clear water be absolutely free from all impurity, the rudest shock will not at all disturb or sully its sweet limpidity; yet if it do rest upon a miry bottom, the least movement will suffice to drabble it.  Thus it is with Jesus and with us; those same storms in which our sinful natures oftenest suffer a shipwreck could only asault and buffet Him; they could not soil the purity of the Son of Mary.

Incorruptible in the bosom of corruption, none the less was Jesus made acquainted with the struggles of our daily warfare, even as He tasted all the glories of such victory.  His resistance, which was that of a hero in this Temptation in the desert, — which later on in the Garden of Gethsemane was unto the shedding of blood,— this divine hardihood was then, and will ever continue to be, His eternal merit.  And that we may better comprehend it, it is important to remember that His time of trial was not limited to the three assaults whose details are known to us, but that it was an issue consuming all of the forty days during which Jesus remained in the desert.  During all that time He was tempted: "And now He can have compassion upon our infirmities, for, without sinning, He has been subject to all our temptations."

It was also a season of penance for the Saviour, through which He passed without eating or drinking.  It would seem that during that long fast, wrapped in prayer and inward strife, He remained unconscious of the needs of the body; "but when the forty days were spent, He was hungry," and the Demon profited by that hour weakness to attack Him in person.  And of what semblance did he present himself before Jesus?  Was it as a Spirit of darkness, as an Angel of light, or with the features of man?  This the Lord did not disclose; and there is little to be gained for us by forming any conjectures.

Not less clouded in obscurity is the character of the conflict in which such mighty powers were brought to battle.  Was there only that threefold attack of sensuality, vainglory, and ambition?  Surely to concede only such people weapons as these two Satan, now in arms against his Lord, were to underrate the artifice and cunning of the Fiend.  Though the Saviour passed through all our common trials, yet all that was during the forty days which preceded the last combat; at this hour, wherein the Prince of Darkness entered the lists, it would be only natural to expect that the allurements would take on somewhat of nobility commensurate with Him toward Whom they were directed, and at the same time something super-subtile and strange worthy of the fallen Angel, whose wiles were all exerted then.  The aim of the Tempter seems to be betrayed even in his questions.  He wanted to know surely who Jesus was; for that keen intellect, which still remained in spite of his overthrow as clear as ever, had seen in the Divine Counsels that his ruin and the salvation of the world would be consummated on the day when the Son of God should become Incarnate.

Man does not live by bread alone. J-J Tissot.

So then he approached the Saviour: "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread!"

The snare was worthy of the hand that fashioned it.  Satan did not offer to those eyes hollowed by long fasting, to the lips parched with first, to that famished body, the enticement of luscious fruits or savoury meats.  He was content to remind Him Whom no lust could have mastered that He, the Son of God, held nature at His beck, and that one word from Him would suffice to change the stones into bread.  Was it befitting that the Christ should perish of hunger in this wilderness, where Heaven seemed to have abandoned Him?  Was it not high time to have recourse to His almighty Attributes?

But Jesus could not forget that it was the will of His Father that He use this power of miracles, which belonged to Him, not four Himself, but for others.  With one word He thrust back the Tempt are:

"It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but way every word which comes from the mouth of God.
"You shall remember," Moses had said to them, "the ways whereby the Lord has led you during these 40 years to afflict you and try you, in order that He might lay bare all that was hidden in your hearts, and that hether you woud be constant or unfaithful to His Commandments.  He has afflicted you with hunger, and He has given you Manna, a foodunknown to you and your fathers, to show you that man does not live by bread only, but by all things which proceed from the mouth of God."  Deut.viii. 2, 3.

Even as Israel was nourished with Manna during the forty years in the desert,2 so the Christ would entrust Himself to the Divine Loving-kindness, seeking above all else that support of the soul, which is the Word of God, His Truth.

Jesus had not responded to that query: "If you are the Son of God;" but the Devil knew that a superior being stood before him, in all likelihood the Messiah promised to Israel.  Thereafter he had but one intention, to bring the Christ to unveil His Mission, and there by His nature.

Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. J-J Tissot.

Therefore he transported Him to the Holy City, and placed Him upon a pinnacle of the Temple.  Then, pointing to the crowds which thronged its courts, He insinuated that the Saviour might well perform some notable prodigy in the sight of His people.

"If you are the Son of God," he said "cast your self below; for it is written that He has given command to His Angels to keep guard over you, and they shall bear you up in their hands, for fear lest your feet should strike against a stone."

To descend encircled by Angels, to appear before the upturned eyes of men in this celestial pomp, would not this be to compel their wondering worship and to draw all hearts unto Him?  Satan could not have conceived a temptation more alluring to the Messiah than was this, and that he might render it irresistible he fortified it by the very language of Scripture.

Vain and useless wiles; for Jesus was come to irradiate the eyes, not of the flesh, but of the spirit, and to conquer souls by a grace unknown to the haughty.  So He was content to add: "It is written also: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."

"Then they Devil transported Him to the top of a tall mountain, whence he showed unto Him in an instant all the empires of the world and their glory.

"I will give you all this power," he said, "and the glory of these kingdoms; for I have them in my dominion, and I distribute them to whom I will, all these things shall be yours, if, falling down before me, you will adore me."

We would not attempt to imagine what the surroundings of that last scene in the Temptation were like; for from the summit of the Quarantine, pointed out by the primitive traditions as the locality, the view only extends from Libanus to the desert of Tekoa; while of course it were useless to look for any height whence in the twinkling of an eye one can embrace all the kingdoms of the world.

I will give you all this power.  J-J Tissot.

But if we are to see in the very high mountain only a figure of that power over the whole face of the world which the Demon arrogates to himself, still we may ask what is the nature of this his empire, whereof we see today only too signal proofs, and what object had he been view by thus tendering it to the Christ?  Did he hope to see Him prostrate Himself at his feet?  Such blindness as this can hardly be attributed to Lucifer.  In this assault of the Tempter, there is evidently nothing but despair at seeing himself overcome by that man, though it be the Man-God; and hence we have his cry of rage and madness.  Satan asks no more: "Art Thou the Son of God?" For him there was no longer any room left for doubt; but now, made certain of his downfall, he sought at least to gratify his hate, and so blasphemed openly before the Presence.  His last speech upon the mountain is but an echo of that cry of revolt which of old he had flung in the face of Heaven itself.  "I will ascend," he had said long since, "and I will be like unto the Most-High!"

At sight of this monster of pride, Jesus, so calm until then, might well have felt a movement of horror.

"Begone, Satan!" He said to him; "for it is written: Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."

The Demon had discharged his last darts.  "All the Temptation being accomplished, he departed from Him for a time," until the hour of the Passion, until that desolation upon the Cross, when for the last time he was to attack Jesus with all the fury of despair.  During the public life of the Saviour we shall see him retaining such a vivid memory of this first defeat that he is fain to fly distraught from His Presence, now grovelling at His feet, while he confesses His Divinity, now crying out to Him in his terror: "Wherefore comest Thou to destroy us before the time?" Now beseeching Him for the bodies of swine, as a last and only refuge.

Angels drew nigh unto Jesus, and they served Him. J-J Tissot.

After the tempest, sweeping wildly over the Mount of the Temptation, suddenly, after the storm was spent, there came a great calm; "the Angels drew nigh unto Jesus, and they served Him." Jewish legends tell how Moses, during his forty days of fasting on Sinai, was nourished by a wondrous harmony, the hymning of the spheres.  Of yet more celestial concord was the banqueting of the Saviour, since He had for ministers unto Him those Spirits of light before whom the stars of the firmament wax pale and wan, and are hushed in silence.

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam