The Tempter and the Beloved
Satan began his first temptation by appealing
to Jesus’ own identity: “If you are the Son of God…” The devil knew that
about 40 days prior to this encounter, Jesus, at his baptism, had heard the
voice of the Father say to him, “This is my beloved Son…” (Mtt 3:13-17).
Now he—the devil—wanted to test and see if Jesus remembered and believed what
God the Father had said about him.
It was a genius plan. Satan had used it before
on Adam and Eve and it had worked. On that fateful day in the Garden of Eden,
he’d tempted Eve to see if she believed what God had said about the forbidden fruit
(Gen 3:1-7). “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees
in the garden?” Eve, of course, remembered that this was not what God had
said; he had only forbidden them to eat the fruit of the tree in the middle
of the garden, but the devil had found his entryway; he had got her thinking,
even doubting, if God really had their best interests in mind by this now strange
commandment.
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| The Temptation and Expulsion of Adam and Eve, Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel |
The devil had sown a seed of distrust in her, and, to consolidate his hold, now went on to convince her how pleasant the fruit was, and how desirable were its benefits. He made her see what he wanted her to see, not what God wanted her to see. Surely, God just didn’t want her and Adam to be like himself!
In a way, the sin of our first parents was
fundamentally a sin of distrust. They lost their trust and faith in what
God had told them. They doubted, at the suggestion of the devil, whether what
he had said about the forbidden fruit was true. Apparently, God had lied
to them! And who was God to tell them what to eat and what not to eat. First it
was food, then what else would it be? Wouldn’t God soon be telling them where
to go and where not to go? what to say and what not to say? No! They had every
right to determine for themselves what was good and what was bad… they didn’t need
God to tell them that, they themselves could determine what was good and what
was bad…
The devil had achieved his masterpiece of
chaos.
“If you are the Son of God…” It is obvious the devil knew Jesus was the Son of God. He knew too,
that we humans tend to forget even what has been explicitly told to us…we tend
to forget who we are. Perhaps Jesus had “forgotten” that he was the Son of God;
perhaps Jesus, after battling 40 days and nights in the wilderness, worn out
and tired would want to prove that he was the Son of God. Aren’t we
humans always yearning to prove ourselves to ourselves and to others, especially
when we find ourselves under-looked, unnoticed, desperate, alone?
But Jesus was not having it. He was not
going to give the devil an entryway into his heart. He knew who he was. That
voice that called him the beloved, even when all he could see all around him
was the baren desert, and every member of his body ached for satisfaction because
of his long fast, had not been forgotten. He believed in the Father who had
called him the Beloved. He remembered that voice. He trusted in his Father to
provide for him all he needed. Couldn’t that Father give him food if he needed
it? Why did he then need to make a show of his own power for the devil’s satisfaction?
Why did he need to prove himself to the devil? He didn’t doubt God. He knew he
was the Son of God. He didn’t need to prove it.
How often our own sin stems from the loss
of that voice of God that calls us his Beloved! At our baptism, we become beloved
children with the Beloved Son: a marvellous gift! But the devil knows how to so
cunningly make us act against our identity as beloved children, how to convince
us to be anything but imitators of our Father (see Eph 5:1-4), especially when
we find ourselves in the deserts of loneliness, desperation and anxiety. We
tell lies yet our Father is the Truth; we hate, speak evil against each other, kill
each other, abuse each other, use each other, yet God, our Father is Love. We
take the reins of our lives into our hands and try to control everything
to work out for us the way we want it to, yet we are not God!
Jesus gives us the example of always
turning to our true identity when we are tempted: we are beloved children of
God! This identity gives us an immense dignity, and indeed it is a grace and a
gift of love from the Father; a gift that can, first of all, only be received,
and not somehow conjured by us at our will, because then it would not be
a gift, and our unfortunate attempt would turn us into weak human beings day-dreaming
of being gods.
It is a gift that should help us realise
that we never have to fall into the temptation to prove ourselves by acts of stubbornness
and stupidity; a gift that should give us peace knowing that we can always rely
on God to provide what we need, when and how we need it; a gift that should
help us avoid those things that would obscure who we truly are in the eyes of
God our Father.
This is easier said than done, of course,
and so Jesus also gives us the means: he goes into the desert, fasts and
listens. He deliberately removes from himself the satisfaction of the
senses so that his ear may more clearly hear God who calls him the Beloved. When
he is tempted, he never appeals to his own powers—he appeals to the Word of God,
to Scripture: “It is written: One does not live on bread alone, but on every
word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” It is the words of his Father
that had sustained him forty days and nights without bodily nourishment and
strengthened him not to bend the knee the devil at his weakest.
In his message for Lent 2026, Pope Leo XIV speaks
on these two themes, Listening and Fasting. This comes straight out of
the Gospels.
[L]istening to the word in the liturgy teaches us to listen to the truth of reality…[I]f Lent is a time for listening, fasting is a concrete way to prepare ourselves to receive the word of God…[P]recisely because it involves the body, fasting makes it easier to recognize what we “hunger” for and what we deem necessary for our sustenance. Moreover, it helps us to identify and order our “appetites,” keeping our hunger and thirst for justice alive and freeing us from complacency.
This Lent is a good time for
us to fast from our usual distractions, pick up our Bibles daily and read, and
listen anew to the voice of our Father who calls us his Beloved Sons and
Daughters. This way we will, through his Grace, find the strength to refuse the
temptation to sin, and so preserve the white garment we were given at our
Baptism.
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