Begone Satan! I Will Lay Down My Life in Obedience to My Father

Sunday’s Gospel for the first week of Lent recounts the three temptations of Our Lord near the end of His forty day solitary fast in the desert. He is in the company of “the beasts” (Mark 1:13). The Old Serpent is watching Him. The first two temptations are more easily understood than the third.

After forty days without food, Jesus, in His human nature, is hungry, very hungry, for food. The hunger is painful, as is natural for a body deprived of food for so long. He is at the point of starvation. The body, undergoing starvation, will begin to consume its own inner organs. The pain must be excruciating for it is a long and drawn out death. But Jesus does not intend to die in the desert. He wishes to set an example, proving that He is a real man whose real body is under the governorship of His real soul. He mortifies His flesh to its breaking point so that we, His members, might prepare ourselves for the battle against self-indulgence and easy-living by fasting. Satan is aroused. He wonders who this man is who goes beyond the mortification of John the Baptist. Could He be the Son of God? So, the devil tempts Him to make Himself a table of bread out of the stones and eat. If He is the Son of God. the devil mused, He can do that. Jesus casts the Old Serpent away with a word: “It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God(Matt. 4:1).
The second temptation has to do with tempting God. If this man is the Son of God, Satan wondered, then surely God will protect Him and keep Him. So, the devil prompts Jesus to put God to the test, quoting holy scripture: “Then the devil took him up into the holy city, and set him upon the pinnacle of the temple, And said to him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written: That he hath given his angels charge over thee, and in their hands shall they bear thee up, lest perhaps thou dash thy foot against a stone.” Jesus wasted no words with the insidious “Bible thumper” and He answered him: “It is written again: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matt. 4: 5 & 6, my emphasis). Jesus is God. Satan did not get the point.

So, the devil had one more card up his sleeve, he thought it was an ace. Now this final temptation is far more sinister and alluring than what it may appear to us dull creatures to be. Let us quote it in full: “[T]he devil took him up into a very high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, And said to him: All these will I give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me. Then Jesus saith to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4: 8-10).

Remember that Satan strongly suspects that this most unusual ascetic, this new desert “faster,” may be the Christ, who was due, now that the scepter had passed from Juda. The evil one has been foolishly trying to draw Him out, stupidly thinking that even if this hungry man is the Son of God, He is still a man, and therefore, conquerable. The devil knows that the Messiah will be his downfall and He will put an end to his dominion over men. He knows that the Messiah will be God Incarnate and that, as the God-man, He will redeem the whole world. Later on, after seeing Our Lord’s miracles, Satan was even more convinced. He knew that the blood of this God-man could redeem the world from sin. So, why did he return after his defeat in the desert and enter into the leaders among the Jews, and cause them to call out for the death of Christ, acclaiming Caesar as their king, and asking for Barabbas in preference to their true King? Why? Because Satan’s hatred for the very Person of God was greater than his self-love. He could not contain his hate for Christ.

But, what exactly was this ruse that he used to try and defeat Jesus in the third temptation? Was he foolish enough to think that this holy man, suffering voluntarily from a forty day fast, would so easily embrace vainglory and the allure of earthly power after repelling his two previous advances?: “All these [kingdoms] I will give thee, if falling down thou wilt adore me.”

I think not. There was something more compelling in his final offer. I have read somewhere, from one of the doctors of the Church, that it was a direct challenge to the divine mission. What the devil was putting before the human will of Our Lord was an easy way out of His work of redemption, rather than through the shedding of His blood and death. In other words, he was suggesting that Jesus abandon this “Lamb of God” mission and establish His kingdom the softer way, by great miracles, without pain and bloodshed. In fact, the “Liar” was promising this unusual man (now on his fortieth day of hunger in the desert) all the kingdoms of the world with all their glory and all their people if He would bow down and worship him. He was lying. The kingdoms were not his to begin with; by their culpable wickedness these kingdoms lent themselves out for a time to the devil, so to speak. So, here is the subtle deception by which the chief demon thought to derail Christ: ‘If you are the Messiah, you can have these kingdoms right now, they are yours for the asking. I will give them to you. You do not have to suffer and die. Just bow down and adore me.’ That is all I need, no incense, just a little bodily act of latria, so that I may have the thrill of being worshiped like God — and not by any puny man, but by a unique man, a strong man, and Holy Man like yourself.

“Begone Satan!” Ponder this, you Father of Deceivers: “for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve”

This reminds me of the communists tempting Cardinal Kung in his cell. They only asked him to bow his head in submission. No need to sign any confession, they told him, and degrade himself by a public document before his flock. Just bend his neck down and he could go free. Do you see Satan’s face here? The devil would be satisfied with a private victory. Cardinal Kung would be his. No one would know about it other than God, the defeated Cardinal, and the possessed communist speaking for Lucifer. THAT is the diabolic final temptation! Kung, however, had a neck of steel.

One can understand, more clearly, in view of this last temptation, why Our Lord was so severe with Peter when he protested the Master’s commitment to suffer many things (and so soon) from the ancients and chief priests and be put to death (leaving behind no visible earthly kingdom) and, afterwards, rise from the dead: “Get behind me, Satan, thou art a scandal unto me: because thou savourest not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men” (Matt. 16:23). Not until the coming of the fire of the grace of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost would Peter and the Apostles know the sublime meaning of the petition of the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

“Not my will,” Jesus prayed to His Father in His agony, “but thine be done.”