The First Sunday of Lent, March 6, 2022

Luke 4:1–13

Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.” Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Then he led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you, and: With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It also says, You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.” When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.

“If you are the Son of God.”  Weeks before the devil tempted the Lord, the devil had himself heard or been told by another demon of the words that came down from heaven to a certain man who was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist: “You are my beloved Son.  In you I am well pleased” (Luke 3, 22).  The devil then watched this man make his way into the wilderness alone and without provisions.  He witnessed him fasting for forty days.  He needed to know who this man was, and how great a threat he was to his infernal power, for anyone who could be called a “Son of God” posed a threat to it.  He would go himself and test him, not leaving this work to his subordinates.  If he proved a threat and could not be turned, he would destroy him.  He had done this many times before.

The devil watched and waited during the forty days of the man’s fast.  Clearly, this man possessed great strength and endurance.  He also had some purpose for undertaking this fast, and doing so in this wild place.  The devil could not guess this purpose, nor had he seen a man fast for so long.  There seemed nothing of equivalent or greater value that could be obtained by this fasting and so the devil considered whether this man might be mad.  But those words from heaven haunted him: “You are my beloved Son.”  He waited until it was clear that the man was resolved to return to the world.  He was weak and exhausted.  That was the time, he knew, to strike.  And he knew just how to test him, given his condition.

“If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”  The devil struck at the man’s most obvious need.  The devil’s object here was not to induce the man to commit a sin, but to get him to reveal what sort of power he had, if any.  “It is written, One does not live on bread alone.”  The man answered him but did not argue with him.  This revealed a strength, a power of restraint, greater than he had shown physically in his fast.  “Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.”  The Fathers are divided on whether this vision appeared interiorly or if the devil did raise him up to some high point to show him as much of the world at one time as a man could see.  We note that the Lord permitted the devil to do this, just as later he would allow the Pharisees to slander him, guards to arrest him, and soldiers to crucify him.  “I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.”  In fact, neither the world nor the kingdoms of the world belonged to the devil.  As the Lord would explain later about the devil to the Apostles: “He is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8, 44).  Here, we see that the devil recognizes the man before him as a serious threat and he attempts to turn him away from God.  He offers power and glory, things which he knew most  people had thrown their lives away for in the past, eve without his tempting them.  “You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.”  The reply came at once, sternly but calmly.  This man had no desire for power and glory.  He resembled the old Prophets, then.  This suggested another strategy to the devil.  “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written: He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you, and: With their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”  The devil presents this temptation in such a way that a man could think that he was offering God the opportunity to show his own glory by saving him from death.  The devil supposed that he could play on his vanity.  “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  But this man possessed no vanity.  At this point, the devil departed “for a time”.  He had much to consider.  He would watch and wait again, until he seemed at his weakest.  He would approach the Lord again with these temptations when he suffered the fasting of his abandonment by his Apostles in the Garden; again when he faced Pilate and could have shown his power and glory and gained release; and when he hung on the Cross, doing the will of the Father.