Today's readings: Deuteronomy 26, 4-10; Romans 10, 8-13; Luke 4, 1-13.
One of the problems of living in a secular society is the lack of any concept of evil. Though it constantly hits the headlines and our attention is often drawn to its manifestation, evil remains ill-defined. Social workers and psychiatrists may clearly explain evil behaviour to us in familiar and accessible terms. But ultimately we remain unguarded.
We all have moments when we are completely powerless, where and when we so much want to heal ourselves, to fight our temptations, and stay in control. But we cannot do it by ourselves. Just as in Alcoholics Anonymous and in the treatment of all addictions, acknowledging one's powerlessness is the first step.
As believers, it is in daily confrontation with the hard, even dramatic, facts of life that we seek to make sense of our faith. The more we sense God's call, the more we will discover in our own soul the cosmic battle between God and Satan. Today's Gospel may provoke questions regarding the existence of Satan, but beyond this issue, one thing we all acknowledge is that there is this power which not only distorts but which also takes possession of our consciences.
The wilderness temptations of Jesus stand for archetypal crossroads not only as faced by Israel in the Scriptures but also as encountered by us in our stories. The three temptations which the Lord rejected represent the choices of human pride, the original sin. For Dostoyevsky, in The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor (from The Brothers Karamazov), these three temptations are "the whole future history of the world and of humanity". The temptation to turn stones into bread, to political power and to idolatry symbolise the fundamental seductions that distort the truth of our humanity.
According to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, "Needs are looked upon today as if they were holy, as if they contained the quintessence of eternity. Needs are our gods, and we toil and spare no effort to gratify them... But the more we indulge in satisfactions, the deeper is our feeling of oppressiveness."
Our major challenge is never to conquer Satan and his seductions but to experience God's Word as a promise that can be fulfilled. Only when we know in our deepest being that we are intimately loved can we face the dark voices of the enemy without being seduced by them. We have the freedom to defy the living God who has created us. But, then, that is the sense of the petition in the Lord's prayer, 'lead us not into temptation'. It is a plea not to be too easily seduced by wicked inclinations.
Trials are not only those that happen in the law courts. There are those trials that are features of ordinary life. A trial is simply an attempt to find out the truth. When in the Gospels we are told that Jesus was 'tempted' in the desert, the word in Greek is the same as that for 'tried'. Such temptations refer fundamentally to the inner struggles of the moral and spiritual self.
Erich Fromm was correct in saying that intellectuals 'got rid' of God in the 18th century and of man in the 19th. Without God we are just rebels driven by pride to assume what we imagine to be the power of God over others. We may have illusions regarding the enemy around us and of ways how to protect ourselves. But fundamentally, the Lenten journey makes us look inside to face the enemy within. Once that is conquered, threats from outside remain threats, but very contained.
As the reading from Deuteronomy goes, we all have our personal story to tell. The less we are in a position to own our stories, the more likely it is for us to fall victims to daily seductions.