St Luke Chapter IV : Verses 5-8
Contents
- Luke iv. 5-8. Douay-Rheims (Challoner) text & Latin text (Vulgate).
- Annotations
- Douay-Rheims 1582 text
Luke iv. 5-8.
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| The devil ...shewed him all the kingdoms of the world. J-J Tissot. Brooklyn Museum. |
Et duxit illum diabolus in montem excelsum, et ostendit illi omnia regna orbis terrae in momento temporis,
6 And he said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.
et ait illi : Tibi dabo potestatem hanc universam, et gloriam illorum : quia mihi tradita sunt, et cui volo do illa.
7 If thou therefore wilt adore before me, all shall be thine.
Tu ergo si adoraveris coram me, erunt tua omnia.
8 And Jesus answering said to him: It is written: Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Et respondens Jesus, dixit illi : Scriptum est : Dominum Deum tuum adorabis, et illi soli servies.
Annotations
[These notes are adapted from the commentary by Cornelius A Lapide on Chapter IV of St Matthew's Gospel. The verse numbers are taken, however, from St Luke's Gospel.]
5. And the devil led him into a high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. In descriptions of the Holy Land, this mountain is said to be near the desert of Quarantana. “The devil’s mountain is distant two miles from Quarantana. It is to the south of Bethel and Hai. Up it Christ was led by Satan, when he showed Him all the kingdoms of the word.” So Adrichomius.
You will ask, in what way did the devil show to Christ all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and that “in a moment,” as S. Luke adds? Observe, God alone is able to do this absolutely; for, in the first place, God is able so to strengthen the power of sight in men that they are able to see any object, however remote, and that even through rocks and walls, so that they see things as they are in themselves, without visible appearance. In this manner He strengthens the mind of the blessed with the light of glory, so that it beholds God’s essence without any appearance. So S. Anselm saw with his bodily eyes things which were done on the other side of a wall, as his “Life” records. In a similar manner God is able to make us here in Rome see with our bodily eyes things done in the bedchamber of the King of China. 2nd. God is able to multiply visible appearances in such wise that they are dispersed through places dark and dense, and even far distant and remote. 3. He is able, not only to draw forth the appearance from an object, but to prolong it to any place whatever. Thus, God showed the whole of the promised land to Moses from Mount Abarim; thus, He set the whole world before the eyes of S. Benedict in a round globe, as S. Gregory relates (lib. 2 Dial., c. 35). The devil can do none of these things.
How, then, did he present all kingdoms before the eyes of Christ?
1. Origen understands kingdoms mystically, as the reign of the devil, in which he rules in some men by anger, in others by pride, in others by gluttony, and so on. Listen to Origen: “The devil showed Him innumerable multitudes of men whom he held in his dominion, and said unto Him, ‘I know that Thou art come to fight against me, and take my subjects from under my sway. I ask You not to contend with me. You need not trouble Yourself to fight. One thing only do I ask, that Thou shouldst fall down and worship me, and then receive all my empire.’ ” But this is mystical, not literal.
2. Some think that the devil flew with Christ through all the kingdoms of the world, and in this manner showed them to Him; but the language used will not admit of this interpretation. It was from their position on the mountain that Satan showed Christ the kingdoms.
3. S. Cyprian (Tract. de Tentat. Christi) is of opinion that they were not shown to the senses, but to the imagination. But I have already shown (on verse 3) that this whole series of temptations was external, not internal, and that the devil had no power over the imagination of Christ.
4. Others suppose that the demon, by means of many mirrors reflecting from one to the other, gathered together the appearances of all the kingdoms of the world, and presented them to the eyes of Christ by art similar to that, by which Socrates is said to have seen a dragon in a far distant mountain devouring men, which no one else was able to see. Similarly we now behold very distant objects by means of a nautical telescope. But to have done this, the demon must have filled the whole atmosphere with mirrors, and even then they would not have sufficed for seeing all things.
5. And with more probability, Euthymius and others, with S. Thomas (3 p., q. 41, art. 4) say that the devil took Christ up on a lofty mountain, that he might show Him, at least in a confused way, the situation of each kingdom, as by saying thus: “There in that direction is Asia; there is Europe, here is Syria, there is Italy”—and all this in a moment, as Luke says, that is, in an extremely brief space of time. And because from this mountain the devil showed Christ not only all kingdoms, but the glory of them, we may add with Theophilus, Jansen, and others, that the demon, like a painter, represented in a compendious manner pictures of all kingdoms in the air by varied refractions of the rays of the sun, as is done in the case of the rainbow, and so, as it were, painted them as to cause whatsoever was glorious and splendid in all lands to be set before the eyes of Christ. Thus did the same demon make dense the air and so work upon it, that he pictured many spectres of lions, wild beasts, serpents, and monsters, and brought them before the eyes of S. Anthony that he might terrify him, as S. Athanasius asserts in his Life of S. Anthony. If the demon is able to picture such things to the fancy, why not in the air? Various colours are depicted in the rainbow. In the time of the Maccabees, squadrons of soldiers were seen fighting in the air, with other portents.
6. And he said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them. You ask, how did the devil dare to make such an impious proposal to Christ? I answer:
1. that he is so ambitious that even from the beginning he wished to be God, and envied Christ, as man, the Divinity which He had by means of the Hypostatic Union. Ambition, therefore, and envy blinded him so that he treated Christ as his rival.
2. Because when he saw Christ once and again declining to work a miracle, he made himself more and more certain that He was not the Son of God.
3. Because from Luke iv. 6 we learn that the devil added, “for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.” from whence it is plain that he pretended to be the Son of God and God, and consequently an object of worship, as S. Hilary says.
The devil then, suspected that He was not the Son of God, but a mere man; and so he here demands the Divine honours which he had formerly coveted in heaven—that they should be rendered to him by Christ as well as by all other men. For this ambition of being a god is, as it were, innate in him, and blinds him, says the Gloss. And therefore he introduced idols, that by them he might be worshipped. Satan, moreover, by this solicitation of worship, wished to make still further trial whether or not Christ were the Son of God.
In this third temptation, his direct object was to tempt to avarice, ambition, and idolatry, and indirectly to find out if He were the Son of God.
7. If thou therefore wilt adore before me, all shall be thine. Observe the arrogance of the devil. He does not care for any mere adoration, but such only as is accompanied by falling down and prostration. Hear what S. Irenæus says upon this expression, fall down. “The devil himself confesses that to worship him and do his will is to fall from the glory of God.” He therefore sells us vain honours at the price of our own destruction. Irenæus adds, “Not even these things which he has promised will he give to him who has fallen.”
S. Luke adds that the devil gave a reason why he made this offer to Christ, but in so doing he told a double falsehood. He said “for to me they are delivered,” i.e., by God, but he withholds mention of the Divine Name, both because it is hateful to him and because he himself wished to be accounted and worshipped as God. And God has not given into his power the kingdoms of the world. “For the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.” [Ps. xxiii. 1] Secondly, because it is false that the devil gives them to whom he will. He did not intend to give the kingdoms of the world to Christ, neither would he have given them, even though Christ had worshipped him. The devil therefore here betrays himself, as Toletus observes, because this his promise was false, arrogant, and deceitful. We have seen why it was false. It was deceitful because he exchanges the present for the future. “I will give,” he says, but he would have the adoration now. By a similar fraud the devil endeavours to persuade men to give their youth and time present to pleasures and himself, but to give the future and old age to repentance and God: though old age is uncertain, and ill adapted for penance, as S. Gregory warns us.
Then saith Jesus, Begone, Satan: [Matt. iv. 10]. The Syriac adds, behind me. Jesus spake thus in righteous anger and indignation; and so the devil, despairing of victory, fled away in confusion. Whence let Christians learn bravely to repel the suggestions of the devil and to rebuke him, and he will flee from them.
8. It is written: Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. For thou shalt adore, the Hebrew has תירא tira, “thou shalt fear.” For the Hebrews by the word fear signify reverence, adoration, the whole worship of God. As Statius says, “Fear first made gods to be in the world.” The word only is not in the Hebrew, but it is understood in the pronoun Him. Thou shalt worship, I say, Him alone, Him, thy Creator. Thou shalt serve Him with latria. For the Greek is λατρεύσεις; since latria is rendered to God alone, dulia to the saints, according to S. Augustine (de Civ. Dei, lib. 10, c. 1), to the Blessed Virgin hyperdulia.
Moraliter. Christ here teaches us the answer we should give to the devil when he tempts us to avarice or any other sin. All temptation tends to this, that we should prefer the creature to the Creator, and make it, as it were, our idol, and worship it. Thus, the idol which the devil sets before the covetous man is Plutus, mammon, riches, kingdoms; the idol of the proud man is honour, ambition; of the glutton, his belly; of the wanton, Venus.
With Christ we must answer Satan, “I worship God, not Plutus or Venus.” For as S. Cyprian says (Tract. de Spect)., “He casts himself down from the vantage ground of his nobility who is able to admire anything in comparison with God.” For what is the whole world, what are all its kingdoms—all creatures—compared with God, but as a point compared with the universe? What is all time in respect of eternity, but as a moment? What are all pleasures, honours, riches, compared with the riches and honours of eternity, but vanities and shadows, yea, but dust and ashes? Despise them, therefore, for God’s sake, and cleave close to Him; and then, last, overcome all temptation. As the Psalmist says, “It is good for me to hold me fast by God.” And again, “My soul is firmly stayed upon God.” As S. Cyprian (de Orat. Domin.) says, “Since of God are all things, to him who hath God nothing will be wanting, if he be not wanting to God.”
In like manner, if the devil threaten you with the fear of infamy, poverty, disease, death, join thyself to God, worship Him with constant hope and prayer. S. Cyprian (in Exhort. Martyr.) shows that some fell away from martyrdom because they had respect to the fierceness of the torments, not to the strength and help of God, and that those stand fast and conquer who turn away their minds from the torments and fix them upon God, and say, “I can do all things through Him who strengtheneth me.” [Phil. iv. 13] God is greater than the torments. So S. Agnes, fixing all her hopes and love upon Christ, vanquished all the torments of the tyrant. For God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and He wills to show to the whole world His strength in our weakness. For God cannot forsake those who hope in Him, call upon Him, and worship Him.
Wherefore, S. Cyprian (Tract. de Mortal.) says, “Adversity does not withdraw us from the power of faith, but confirms us.” Of this S. Anthony had experience, who, on the testimony of S. Athanasius, was wont to say that “the best remedy for overcoming all the temptations of the devil is spiritual joy and the love of Christ, from one sign of whose cross he flies away vanquished.”
Douay-Rheims : 1582 text
5. And the Diuel brought him into an high mountaine, and ſhewed him al the Kingdoms of the whole world in a moment of time;6. and he ſaid to him: To thee wil I giue this whole power, and the glorie of them; for to me they are deliuered, and to whom I wil, I doe giue them.7. Thou therfore if thou wilt adore before me, they ſhal al be thine.8. And IESVS anſwering ſaid to him: It is written, Thou ſhalt adore the Lord thy God & him only ſhalt thou ſerue.
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SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.
The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
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