These words from Sirach come to my mind when I reflect on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness:
My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord…prepare yourself for temptation. (Sir. 2:1)
Two things are clear about Christ’s temptations as He embraced His public mission. Firstly, He knew that He was going to be tempted by the devil, just as He knew every single detail of His suffering and death. St. Mathew reminds us of Jesus’ full knowledge of the impending temptations: “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” He entered the desert knowingly for this purpose.
Secondly, Jesus prepared Himself for these temptations. There are certain things that Jesus did and dispositions that He had to prepare for them, and everything Jesus did becomes a divine example for us on how to act. He prepared Himself in order to teach us that we, too, will face certain temptations and that we must prepare ourselves for them.
Jesus shows us four ways in which we are to prepare ourselves for temptations:
1. Through Prayer and Self-Denial
Jesus prepared for His temptations by praying and fasting for forty days and forty nights. Though He was hungry for physical nourishment after His fast, His deepest desire and hunger was to fulfill the will of the Father as His beloved Son. His prayers and fasting intensified His desire and resolve to do the will of God in all things.
If the holy Son of God prepared for temptations with prayer and fasting, how in the world can we sinners hope to overcome temptations without prayer and self-denial?
Prayer helps us avoid certain temptations entirely, as Jesus confirmed, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation ” (Mt. 26:41); however, it also help us with those temptations we cannot avoid because it awakens the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. We then face temptations with courage, and without fear, because the Spirit is alive and active within us through our prayer—“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of sonship” (Rom. 8:14-15). We face temptations with courage as God’s beloved sons and daughters, whose deepest hunger is the fulfillment of God’s will for us at each moment.
Acts of self-denial and fasting serve to strengthen our will to obey God and resist temptations. When we fast, we train our wills to deny ourselves legitimate pleasures, thus preparing them to reject sinful ones. We cannot hope to reject temptations when our wills are bent on choosing what is pleasing, immediate, and pleasurable.
2. By Knowing, Loving, and Acting on the Truth
When Jesus was tempted to satisfy His hunger by turning stones into loaves of bread, He replied, “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” Jesus, the “way and the truth and the life” (Jn. 14:6), was consuming the word, keeping it alive in His heart, and living on it. He was completely grounded in the truth of who He is before the Father and what the Father desired of Him at each moment.
We too must be grounded in the unchanging truth of God’s words. We must believe in the word of truth about who God is, His love for us, and what His love demands from us at each moment. We are not preparing ourselves for temptations when we succumb to the moral relativism and subjectivism of our times, which make truth something changeable, something based on feelings or public opinion. How can we ever hope to overcome temptations when we respond to moral issues by saying, “Who am I to judge?”
The devil is the father of lies. His mode of attacking us is to make us doubt the truth of God’s words, as he did to Adam and Eve when he asked them, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” (Gen. 3:1). Uncertainty or doubt about divine truth is a doorway for the enemy to get into our lives. The way to overcome his temptations is to be firm in the truths we believe and our readiness to act on them, no matter how we feel about it.
3. By Depending on God for All Things
When Jesus was tempted to throw Himself down from the parapet of the temple, He replied, “Again it is written, you shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” He refused to “prove Himself” through such a public stunt because He knew that His Father would do a greater miracle by raising Him from the dead. He was not disappointed. Soon after He had dispatched the devil, “angels came and ministered to Him.”
We, too, prepare for temptation by trusting and depending on God in all aspects of our lives—finances, health, relationships, careers, trials, temptations, and our spiritual life. We are sure of victory if we trust in God always and in all things, refusing to put Him to the test in any way, especially through occasions of temptation.
The devil overcomes us through the areas of our lives where we lack trust in God. Our victory over temptations is possible only when we have a universal and unshakeable trust in God.
4. Through Serving and Worshipping God Alone
When Jesus was tempted to worship Satan to gain the world, He rebuked him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: The Lord, your God, shall you worship, and Him alone shall you serve” (Mt. 4:1-11). Jesus was fully committed to the worship and loving service of His Father, long before He was tempted by Satan. Even as a little boy, He had said, “I must be about my Father’s business” (Lk. 2:49).
We, too, prepare for temptations when we are fully committed to worshipping and serving God alone, irrespective of the cost or consequences. We must renew and deepen our holy resolve to serve God by His grace, no matter our past failures and present struggles. We cannot face temptations when our service and worship of God are conditional in any way.
Our first parents, Adam and Eve, were abundantly blessed in the earthly paradise of Eden. They had a deep friendship with God and enjoyed His blessings. God called them to serve Him by caring for creation, but they did not prepare for the temptations that were sure to come, even in that earthly paradise. They were deceived by the tempter and experienced the usual consequences of sin—shame, guilt, conflict, and sadness.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not living in an earthly paradise now but in a valley of tears, bombarded with temptations at every moment. We have a fallen nature that is inclined toward sin and not virtue. We are tempted toward lust, greed, sloth, and other capital sins. We are tempted to lose our faith, hope, and charity. We are tempted to give up our commitments to serve the Lord and His people for His sake. We are tempted by our sinful natures, the world, and the devil, “who always goes around seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). All the shame, guilt, violence, abuse, sadness, and depression in our world today show that we are not finding the victory over our temptations that we should.
In our earthly journey, we must anticipate temptations and prepare for them all the time. We must not wait for them to strike and find us unprepared. Not to be prepared for temptations is to choose to fall into sin. We must prepare for them by reflecting on our past sins, noticing our patterns, including how and when we usually fall into sin, and correcting them as soon as possible. We look at our future and discern the areas of weakness that we want to correct by God’s grace.
Lastly, we must allow Christ Jesus, the New Adam, to prepare us for the temptations that will come our way. Jesus alone knows the exact temptations that we are to face as we resolve to serve Him. He comes to us with “an abundance of grace and of the gift of justification” so that we, too, “come to reign in life through the one Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17). We are to reign over all temptations, as Christ did, because we now have access to the graces, forgiveness, mercy, hope, and other amazing gifts, which Christ earned for us by His death and resurrection.
Jesus comes with His graces in each Eucharist to prepare us for the many temptations that are sure to come. If we allow Him to prepare us for temptations, then we will overcome them and serve Him faithfully by His grace.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
Image from Wikimedia Commons
