Genesis describes the “Original Temptation” – “You will be like gods, knowing what is good and what is evil.”  This is the story of the first sin, symbolized by the eating of the forbidden fruit. It tells us that Adam and Eve were given the possibility of making a choice. The fundamental choice was to live for God, dependent upon, and obedient to, His will, or to say no to God. Like Adam and Eve, we are all tempted to put ourselves in God’s place.  Consequently, we resent every limit on our freedom, and we don’t want to be held responsible for the consequences of our choices.  In Genesis, we witness how temptation to evil led Adam and Eve to an act of faithlessness and sin.  In contrast, today’s Gospel from St. Matthew shows us how Jesus Christ conquered temptation by relying on Faith in God’s Word and authority. Are we tempted to serve the gods of our inordinate desires instead of serving our loving and providing God? Today’s Responsorial Psalm (Ps 51) presents our contrition or acknowledgment of guilt before God: “Against Thee, thee only, have I sinned.”

St. Paul describes how the disobedience of Adam who fell to Satan’s Original Temptation brought him and us death and a broken relationship with God. He presents Adam who did not resist temptation with its evil consequences for humanity, and Christ, who did resist temptation. and so gave humanity the promise of new Life.  Paul reminds us of the social consequences of sin. Sin is never a private affair, affecting only myself. When we sin, all our relationships are affected: our relationship with our inner self, our relationships with our brothers and sisters, our relationship with our God and our relationship with nature and the world in which we live. Paul says that just as sin and death came through Adam, salvation and life come through Christ. Paul compares human sin and its consequences to Christ’s saving action and its restorative effects on humankind. Christ regained for us a right relationship with God that Paul calls justification, which comes to us as undeserved grace. Thus, Paul’s words to the Romans describe humanity’s rehabilitation by grace. The first Adam brought disobedience, sin, condemnation, and death. The new Adam has brought obedience, righteousness, justification, and eternal life. (St. Paul uses what theologians call typology to help us understand exactly what Jesus has done for us and how he established for us a new life, overcoming what Adam and Eve wrought for us. He sees Adam as a type or foreshadowing of Christ).

The graphic descriptions of the temptations of Jesus given in Matthew and Luke are sometimes interpreted as the dramatic presentation of a single temptation Jesus experienced throughout his public life.  The devil was trying to entice Jesus away from his mission to die for all of us, so that he could become, instead, a political messiah of power and fame according to the Jewish expectation, while using His Divine power to avoid suffering and death.  In this account, we are given a glimpse of the inner struggle of Jesus as he faced the question of how to accomplish his mission.  Matthew presents Jesus as conquering the tempter and beginning his preaching in Galilee.  We always encounter temptation in its three major forms: power, prestige, and prosperity with two qualifying terms: “more” and “control.” We want “more” of everything and “control” of our destiny, feeling that only we know what is best for ourselves. Jesus’ temptations remind us of the temptations Israel experienced in the desert. The first temptation recalled God’s gift of manna to Israel in the desert (Exodus 16:4-8) and tested him in his capacity as the Son of God. The second temptation was a test of Jesus’ authentic sonship and it recalled the wilderness incidents wherein Israel complained against God and demanded Him to show His power by providing for their needs. Then in the third test, Jesus is offered a vision of all the world’s kingdoms in their splendor, to be entirely his for his worship of Satan. Jesus was shown those kingdoms, just as Moses atop Mt. Nebo surveyed the promised land (Dt 34:1-4), and as the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 2:6-8) describes  God giving his Messiah-son-king the nations of the earth as an inheritance. The first temptation has to do with Jesus’ own need for food.  The second temptation involves a wider circle in Jerusalem and the Temple.  Finally, the third temptation takes in the whole world.  Matthew saw the sequence of the three temptations as significant in that they moved to greater heights, from stones on ground level, to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, and finally to a mountain top from which all the kingdoms of the earth could be surveyed.  The progression was also greater in intensity and scope, from personal food to power in Israel and then to rule over the whole world.

The gradation in temptations: The three temptations – turn stones into bread (4:3); jump off the Temple pinnacle (4:6); worship Satan (4:9) – demonstrate three kinds of control: material, spiritual and civil.  They correspond to three wrong evaluations: 1) those who have material resources are blessed by God; 2) those who have spiritual powers are blessed by God; 3) those who have national power are blessed by God.  These, in turn, correspond to three human-divine bargains: 1) I will worship You if you make me rich; 2) I will worship You if You endow me with magical powers; and 3) I will worship You if You give me political power.  These temptations of Jesus are traditionally treated as archetypes of the temptations we experience: the temptation to satisfy personal needs by material possessions, the temptation to perform miraculous deeds by spiritual power, and the temptation to seek political power and social influence by evil means. But Jesus dismisses all three temptations using the Word of God.  He quotes the Law from Scripture itself: “One does not live by bread alone” (Dt 8:3); “Do not put the Lord your God to the test” (6:16); “Worship the Lord, your God” (6:13).  Each time the devil tempts him Jesus responds with a quote from the Book of Deuteronomy which describes the experience of Israel during her forty years in the desert.

The first temptation: Is it possible to fast forty days and live to tell the tale? The New York Times says the average person can go for thirty days without eating. Gandhi and the Irish prisoners in British jails in Belfast fasted even longer. Mitch Snyder, the US advocate for the homeless, fasted fifty-one days. The first temptation could not have been better timed.  Jesus had been fasting for forty days.  He was entitled to eat.  Even Israel in the Old Testament was miraculously fed with manna.  Why not the Son of God?  “Turn these stones into loaves of bread.  Use your power to satisfy your physical need.  You are entitled to food after a forty-day fast.”  The temptation was that Jesus use the miraculous powers God had given Him to use for His mission to provide for himself.  This first temptation of Jesus was not merely the urge to satisfy his hunger by some miraculous deed.  It also had implications as to how Jesus would respond to the physical needs of others, especially their need for food.  Matthew tells us, for example, that Jesus miraculously fed a multitude of people (14:13-21 and 15:32-39).  Jesus would be seen as the Messiah who provided for their pressing needs.

The very seat of religious life, namely, the sacred precincts of the Temple itself became the scene of the second temptation.  The devil was suggesting that, on the basis of Scripture, Jesus must believe in and insist on Divine protection: if He were the Son of God, He had the right to expect safety and protection from His heavenly Father.  Here Jesus is pressured either to identify Himself as God’s Son and Messiah, or to discredit His mission by apparently either denying His trust in God, the truth of Scripture or His own right to speak in God’s Name.  An additional temptation for Jesus was to use his miraculous powers to amaze people and thereby attract followers.

In the third temptation, the devil wanted Jesus to enter the world of political power to establish his kingdom of God instead of choosing the path that would lead to suffering, humiliation and death.  It was a temptation to do the right thing using the wrong means.  Jesus was being tempted to win the world by worshipping the devil.  Why not compromise a bit?  Why not strike a deal with the evil powers?  Spirit-filled, sanctified, spiritually vibrant Christians are still subject to the same temptation.  We need companionship, acceptance, the approval of others, love and appreciation.  We are tempted to fulfill these legitimate needs using the wrong means.