If you are the Son of God
"This is a test. For the next sixty seconds,
this station will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is
only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been
instructed to tune to one of the broadcast stations in your area."
Temptation is a test. It might be that I should
from time to time put in the Parish Bulletin: “If you are tempted, this is a test, this is only a test. If this is a
real emergency you are instructed to contact your parish priest.”
A temptation is a test and if we do not
understand that we will never get the point of the story of the temptations of
Jesus, never mind our own temptations.
The Hollywood Devil is a gnostic god, that is, a
bad god evenly matched with a good god, omnipotent, ‘all-powerful’ and omniscient, ‘all-knowing’.
The real Devil is considerably dumber. He could not be sure that this man Jesus
was the Son of God and he needed to know. After all the Devil was the “Prince
of this world” and, if Jesus was Son of God, the Devil was about to be
recalled. The Devil was conducting a series of experiments on Jesus to find
out. The results were inclusive but all the evidence pointed to the truth that
hell feared that the Conqueror of Hell had come to earth in man’s flesh.
The reason the results are inconclusive is
because Jesus' time had not yet come. The first to recognize Jesus as the Holy
One are the demons -- I suppose that boss had sent them a memo based on the what happened in the wilderness -- but Jesus commands them to be silent. He might simply be a very holy man, a man
after God’s own heart. The Devil isn’t even smart enough to ask the right
questions: Can you turn stones to bread? Can you throw yourself off the
pinnacle of the temple and not even stub your toe? Can you resist, if I offer
you authority over the whole world? A very holy man could do that.
Interestingly enough Jesus eventually, when the
time is right, does everything that the Devil suggests. He multiplies the loaves and feeds the five
thousand: stones to bread. He allows himself to be crucified but is raised on
the third day: jumping off the pinnacle of the temple. And after his
resurrection, after he has broken down the gates of hell and pulled Adam and
Eve out of that infernal place, he says “all authority in heaven and earth has been
given to me.”
The
temptations are not the sin; the sin is almost hidden like the small print in a
contract in the last temptation: if you
will fall down and worship me.
The obvious question about all this is who told
St. Matthew and St. Luke about it. Because no one was there besides Jesus and
the Devil. The only possible answer is the Apostles who got it from Jesus
himself. Why? Because Jesus knew that his temptations would be the temptations
of the Church, his temptations would be the temptations of Christians.
The Church is called to have compassion on the
poor and needy but the temptation of the Church is to be merely a philanthropic
society rather than the one organization in the world which trains men for
their supernatural destiny, for heaven.
The Church is a place of salvation and healing
but it is not an Insurance Company promising to protect people from suffering.
The Church is in the world but not of the world
and she cannot not trade truth for political power by accommodating herself to
the world.
Temptations rarely, really never come to us as
pure evil. They are always dressed up with good and noble purposes: how many
poor people could be fed with the stones turned to bread; God doesn’t want
anyone to be hungry; how many people would believe, if they saw me miraculously
healed; I know God will take care of me; maybe I would believe, if I was healed
and doesn’t God want me to believe; what good I could do if I was in charge, if
I was giving the orders. And it is very easy to fail to miss
the small print: if you will fall down
and worship me.
We resist as we are able because He perfectly
resisted. We resist as He resisted because we cannot worship or serve anyone or
anything but God, the living and true. We can
resist only because He resisted. And we can only resist in the way he resisted: waiting
for the Father to give us what He will, walking the Way of the Cross, and
watching in the night for the paschal light of His Resurrection to pierce the darkness.
Jesus Christ is the Son of God by nature and we
are sons of God by adoption. By now the devil knows about Jesus, but what he doesn't know is about us.
If you are the Son of God
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