As the Church enters Lent, the Church offers us the Gospel of Jesus’ temptation by Satan. It’s really an odd story, when you look at it, because there isn’t anything that the devil could give Jesus that he didn’t already have or have access to. Bread? Jesus had multiplied bread to feed 5,000. Power and glory? Jesus would explain that his kingdom “was not of this earth” in defiance to Pilate’s civil authority to condemn or acquit. Personal safety? Meaningless to one willing to humbly accept crucifixion.
Theologians explain that Jesus was like us in all ways but sin. The temptation he experienced was real, but unlike our own encounters with temptation, his will to turn back temptation would have been perfect. What might that look like for us as we struggle with human wills and intellects darkened by sin?
One might observe in the scriptures that Jesus seems rather unemotional and detached from the moment. But does Jesus draw his strength from being strictly rational like a computer or the famous Star Trek character, Mr. Spock? No. Scriptures attest over and over again of Jesus’ compassion. Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus. He asked that the cup of suffering might be taken from him as he sweat blood. He frequented festive meals and gatherings, eating with the couple at Cana, celebrating Passover with his disciples, and comparing life in his kingdom to an endless feast. Jesus was fully human in his emotional responses to the world. The difference is that he was not ruled by these feelings in the same way that we, through concupiscent desire are blinded as we run head-long into sin. Fasting, prayer, and almsgiving are intended to perfect the will, which in the confusion of sin are unable to distinguish relative goods of this earth from the absolute good of God.
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