Temptation of Christ.

The preparations for the Jubilee Year 2000 assign 1997 as the year to reflect on Our Lord Jesus Christ, especially with reference to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 4. (See C.I., Jan-Feb. '97, pp. 3 and 19-21).

It begins with the temptation of Jesus in the desert, the gospel theme also of the first Sunday in Lent.

I have a theory that Christ's battle with the powers of darkness was won in the desert, and that Calvary was just a last lunge of despair on Satan's part. For on Calvary, Satan attacked Christ physically, which is like a chess player trying to win by beating up his opponent. Satan's strong point, if he can be said to have one, is the mind. He won the battle with our first parents Adam and Eve in the realm of the mind, convincing them that disobedience to God would be an exercise of independence on their part. He did not attack them physically. He knew that their physical degradation would take care of itself once they had believed his lies.

So he tried the same thing on Christ. You've been fasting for forty days. You're hungry. "Command these stones to become loaves of bread." And, truth to tell, where is the sin in that? Why are these things called temptations? It is not a sin to eat, even when you're not famished. Nor is miracle-working a sin. Our Lord was to work miracles a-plenty, including something similar in the multiplication of the loaves. One might argue, with reason, that there must have been something wrong with the suggestion if Satan suggested it, but still a sin has to be objectively wrong.

A sinful act has to contain an intrinsic disorder. It is our Lord's answer that gives us the clue to what that disorder is: "Not on bread alone does man live, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." There are two goods at stake here, bread and the word of God, and both have to be taken into consideration. There is nothing wrong with bread; there is nothing wrong with eating; there is nothing wrong with this world's goods, but there is something very wrong with making material goods into a replacement for spiritual goods. In fact, of the two, spiritual goods have a natural priority.

To which Satan responded, in effect, "That's right, of course!," and let go of the rope so that Christ would fall in the opposite direction. For he took Christ to the pinnacle of the temple and said, "Cast yourself down," making his dizzy suggestion attractive with as beautiful a line as may be found in the psalms, "for it is written, `He has given his angels charge over thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone'." "Yes, of course, Christ, the spiritual takes precedence over the material any day in the week. So let it. Trash your material well-being in the name of spirituality. [In our time Satan persuaded a man by the name of Jim Jones to do just that, and take 1000 followers with him]. Don't worry about committing suicide. The angels -- those wonderful angels -- will look after you!"

Christ replied, "It is also written, `Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'." Taking one's own life, or anybody else's life or well-being, in the name of doing him a favour (or even doing a favour to God), is contempt for God, as if to say, "Let's see You handle this one!"

So Satan threw caution (and trickery) to the winds, and said, "Worship me; I will give you the world!" (He did not quite abandon trickery, for the world was not his to give, except in its spurious character as an effect without a cause). But Christ answered him simply: "The Lord thy God shalt thou worship, and Him only shalt thou serve."

If we seek examples of the enormity of those temptations, we need only remember that Stalin killed 7,000,000 Ukrainians and 20 million others in the name of dialectical materialism, matched by Hitler who did much the same for Jews, Slavs, and Catholics in the name of racial purity. Those who are fond of the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" might reflect that between Hitler and Stalin there is no essential difference, just as suicide and living for bread alone are two sides of the same bad coin.

What 2000 years of history (if nothing else) have revealed is that the material and the spiritual, when they work together, create, when the spiritual is emphasized, the understanding and living of the Gospel, and, when the material is emphasized, human progress (including our technology, magnificent and triumphant when it is life-giving, a parody of progress when dedicated to the production of arms and suction machines, condoms and petridishes).

But Satan lost, every round. Three years later he had had enough and, if one may say so, himself succumbed to the temptation to attack Christ physically. I forget what saint it was who said that, on Calvary, Satan attempted to devour Christ, and, in so doing, poisoned himself.

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of man, is the King of the universe and the Centre of history. (John Paul II, Redemptor hominis). His Mother is the Queen of heaven and earth, "fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array."

Joseph Thompson, an associate editor, is the father of eleven children and a grandfather of 20.