Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness by James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum, Public Domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.<\/i><\/p>\n
During that time the devil[a] came and said to him, \u201cIf you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
But Jesus told him, \u201cNo! The Scriptures say,<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2018People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, and said, \u201cIf you are the Son of God, jump off! For the Scriptures say, \u2018He will order his angels to protect you. And they will hold you up with their hands so you won\u2019t even hurt your foot on a stone.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Jesus responded, \u201cThe Scriptures also say, \u2018You must not test the Lord your God.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. \u201cI will give it all to you,\u201d he said, \u201cif you will kneel down and worship me.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cGet out of here, Satan,\u201d Jesus told him. \u201cFor the Scriptures say,<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2018You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.\u2019\u201d And the devil left him until another time, and angels came and took care of Jesus.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nMatthew 4: 1-11, Luke 4: 13.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJesus was God. Jesus was also a human being, with all the weaknesses of character, all the hungers, desires and needs, that human beings experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJesus\u2019 humanity was an open door for temptation to walk through.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSatan has an easy time with us. Our desires and needs, our many hungers, leave us sieve-like and defenseless against the onslaught of temptations. Our big brains and ability to dissimulate and lie to ourselves render us even more vulnerable. They allow us to convince ourselves that the evil we do is good, necessary if we are to achieve good.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis ability to think ourselves out of our own well-deserved guilt is what enabled the Chief priest of 33 AD, along with his priest buddies, to \u201creason\u201d themselves into thinking that murdering an innocent man was a good and right thing to do.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe fact that they were murdering God made flesh was beyond their reckoning. Jesus prayed for them on the day they murdered Him, \u201cthey know not what they do\u201d because it was true. They didn\u2019t know He was God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut they knew enough. They may not have known that they were trumping up false charges to put the God they claimed to worship to death, but they did know that they were lying and scheming to enact a judicial murder of an innocent man.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey convinced themselves that what they were doing was necessary and good because they also convinced themselves that political pragmatism required it. \u201cBetter that one man should die than the whole nation,\u201d they said to each other.<\/p>\n
This was based on another lie they told themselves, which was that they were doing this murder to prevent civil uprising and Roman retaliation. In truth, these priests were political operatives of the Romans. They bartered the leadership position their priesthood gave them to obtain a cushy deal with the Romans for themselves. They murdered Jesus to protect their good deal. They lied about Him to get it done.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut their first and worst lies were the self-serving, self-excusing, self-forgiving lies they told themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBy the time these priests decided to murder Our Lord, Satan didn\u2019t have to tempt them. They took care of that themselves. But Satan did have to tempt Jesus. The devil attempted to walk through the wholly human door of Jesus\u2019 human appetites.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFirst, he tried the simple ploy he used in the Garden. \u201cTurn these stones to bread and eat.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s such a simple thing to use to tempt a ravenously hungry, thirsty man. It\u2019s as easy and obvious as taking a bite out of an apple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou\u2019re God. Don\u2019t stand there starving. Just turn these rocks into loaves of bread. What\u2019s the harm in that?\u201d<\/p>\n
What if Jesus had said \u201cyes\u201d?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOur Passover Lamb would have been sacrificed for a loaf of bread. We would die in our sins, with no hope of redemption. Our eternity hung in the balance of Jesus\u2019 answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nInstead of answering Satan directly, Jesus quoted Scripture. \u201cPeople do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nJesus quoted Scripture, and Satan had no answer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWe are tempted by Satan in much the same way he tempted Jesus. The difference is that, no matter who we are, we are doomed to accept at least some of these temptations and fall face first into sin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne of the most unfortunate things in Catholic culture is the pretense that Holy Orders somehow or other protects a man from these trips and falls into sin. I think that the real truth \u00a0is that satan tempts them hard because he can use their sins to drive many other people away from Christ.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nInstead of engaging in a sort of quasi worship of our priests, we \u2014 and they \u2014 need to accept the fact that they are in fact and in truth just human beings, and that because of the self-deifying things they\u2019ve taught us about themselves, we\u2019ve been bamboozled into taking them and their ideas a lot more seriously than we should.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019m thinking in particular about the bad habit that Catholics have of taking their clergy\u2019s demands for obedience seriously when they fall in areas totally outside the clergy\u2019s area of expertise. The Church has made a fool of itself many times throughout its long history by attempting to extend its rule into areas of science and politics. Galileo comes to mind, as do the Spanish Inquisition, 2,000 years of support for legalized misogyny, and the rise of Adolph Hitler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSatan tempted our clergy the same way that he tempted Our Lord. The difference being that the clergy says \u201cyes\u201d to all of it. They want <\/i>the kingdoms of the world, they want <\/i>money, power and adulation. They will sell their priestly heritage for this bowl of political soup just about any time the deal is offered to them. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe antidote for the grave sin of handing your soul over to power, money and hubris is simple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTake your soul back and give it to Jesus.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBe like Christ when He was tempted. Rely, not on your human pride and arrogance, but on God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry. During that time the devil[a] came and said to him, \u201cIf you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.\u201d But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":35114,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-catholic","category-clergy"],"yoast_head":"\n
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