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Some Reflections
The temptations were intended to induce him to externalize his being, to turn his life into an expression of power, to dominate, to be “extraordinary”; and not, on the contrary, to hold out to the end, enduring whatever was to befall him, hiding his immediate personal divinity in the obscurity of his way of life, not imposing himself upon anyone, living cheerfully and peacefully among simple people, and not forcing God’s hand even his most extreme need.
When Christ rejected the temptations, he won back the essence of humanity. He let the powers of evil come right up to him. And at the decisive moment he shattered them with a simple No. He did not betray us for a crust of bread. To him our wretchedness was sacred. He did not hesitate for a moment. His victory was not a dazzling triumph, since no one knew of it. It took place in utter solitude. Nevertheless it made possible a new future for mankind—the turning of hearts to goodness, not of stones to bread.
Ladislaus Boros
Source: In Time of Temptation translated by Simon and Erika Young
Even though Jesus renounced these assaults, confiding his entire trust in God, he lives in the company of evil for the rest of his life, along the frontier of evil, as Karl Barth puts it, subject to its constant offensive warfare. The Pharisees tempt him to prove his power. His mother tempts him to put his ties to her before his doing God's work. His disciples tempt him to despair of human frailty, with their sleepiness in the face of his vigil, their doubting in the face of his affirmation, and their denial and betrayal in the time of his suffering and death. Finally his own disgrace and death tempt him in his human person to despair of God's intention. Here again, as Barth puts it, the good will of God is for the moment indistinguishable from the evil will of humanity and the world and Satan. Jesus voluntarily enters into all these temptations and feels their full force. In each instance he turns his face toward God and willingly puts his fate in God's hands, even when, as at Gethsemane his own will seeks another direction.
Ann and Barry Ulanov, Primary Speech: A Psycology of Prayer, p. 69
Therefore Jesus goes into the desert, therefore he fasts; therefore he leaves behind everything else that a man needs even for bare existence, so that for this once not just in the depths of his heart but in the whole range of his being he can do and say what is the first and last duty of humankind – to find God, to see God, to belong to God to the exclusion of everything else that makes up human life. And therefore he fasts. Therefore through this cruelly hard act, this denial of all comfort, this refusal of food and drink, through the solitude and abandonment of the desert, through everything else that involves a rejection, a self-denial of the world and all earthly company, through all these he proclaims this fact: one thing only is necessary, that I be with God, that I find God, and everything else, no matter how great or beautiful, is secondary and subordinate and must be sacrificed, if needs be, to this ultimate movement of heart and spirit.
-Karl Rahner 1904-1984
The Great Church Year
And so we are tempted of Satan, tempted to give up, to despair. Tempted to cynicism. Tempted sometimes to cruelty. Tempted not to help others when we know we can, because, we think, what's the use. Tempted to banish from our life all that we really hold most dear, and that is love, tempted to lock ourselves up, so that when we pass by people feel, 'There goes a dead man.' And behind each and all of these temptations is the temptation to disbelieve in what we are, the temptation to distrust ourselves, to deny that is is the Spirit himself which beareth witness with our spirit. God in us.
-Harry Williams 1919-2006
True Wilderness
quoted from Celebrating the Seasons (Morehouse)
Let the enemy rage at the gate, let him knock, let him push, let him cry, let him howl, let him do worse; we know for certain that he cannot enter save by the door of our consent.
-Francis de Sales 1567-1622
Humility
I saw all the devil's traps set upon the earth, and I groaned and said, “Who do you think can pass through them?” And I heard a voice saying, “Humility.”
-Anthony the Great c.251-356
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away,
the light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.
-Rumi 1207-1273
If leaf trash chokes the stream-bed,
reach for rock-bottom as you rake
the muck out.
- Marie Ponsot b. 1921 Springing: New and Select Poems
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villian with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
-William Shakespeare 1564?-1616
The Merchant of Venice
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