14 January OS: Leave-taking of Theophany 2025 – the Temptation of Christ
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At that time: Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. – Luke 4: 1-15
The Lord Jesus came and took our flesh to do for us, as one of us, what we could not do for ourselves, so that a Man could fix what Man had broken. God did not write man off and forget about him after the Fall, nor did He wave a magic wand and make everything all right. He neither abandoned us to our (deserved) fate nor did He give us a “Get Out of Jail Free” card. He came among us as one of us and said, “Alright, now roll up your sleeves and follow Me; we have work to do.” God’s righteous decree of death and hell upon sinful man could not be overturned without overturning the universe, indeed without denying Who God Is, for God is perfect Justice, and yet God’s will to save man was unchanged and unchangeable, for God is perfect Mercy. Therefore God Himself came and did for us what we could not do for ourselves.
He fulfilled that which we could not fulfill: the Law.
He endured that which we could not endure: the totality of all the sufferings caused by sin, when He took upon Himself the sins and sufferings of all the men that ever have lived and ever will live to the end of the world, suffering in His most pure soul at every moment of His earthly life, and then making a total Holocaust of Himself, body and soul, in His unspeakable and incomprehensible sufferings in the Sacrifice of the Cross.
He conquered that which we could not conquer – sin, death, the devil, and hell.
Thus both Justice and Mercy have been fulfilled in the one God-Man, Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus fulfilled are the words of David in the psalm that we read every day at the Ninth Hour, three in the afternoon, the hour of the death of the Lord on that first Great Friday: “Mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other (Psalm 84:10 LXX).”
In today’s Gospel we see the God-Man in a critical phase of His campaign on earth, the battle which the New Adam wins easily by absolutely rejecting Satan’s temptation to sin. Here the Lord reverses the foolish weakness of our First Parents, who listened to the serpent’s lies and thus fell into his clutches. There is not a single moment of hesitation here, not the trace of a nanosecond of thinking over the choice being offered. He does not give the tempter the time of day.
To follow Our Lord as His disciples, we have to do the same thing. The Holy Fathers teach us that temptation and the fall into sin occur in several stages. The first stage is called the “provocation” (prosvoli in Greek, prilog in Slavonic), the initial thought of a sin that occurs to us apart from our own will, either from the demons or the outside world or something involuntary within ourselves (memory, imagination, random thought processes, bodily sensations, etc.). At this point, there is no sin involved, only the temptation. This is the point at which we have to reject the thought absolutely – not give it the time of day. We have to say “No!” immediately and turn to prayer right away, asking God and our Guardian Angel and God’s saints to come to our aid. They will come, and come swiftly, if only we turn to them.
By the constant habit of rejecting sinful suggestions, we acquire firmness of mind and heart, and we can “go from strength to strength,” growing in the Holy Spirit into the spiritual stature the Lord desires for us. By doing the opposite, by playing with the temptations offered us, sometimes we fall and sometimes we do not. When we fall, we can get up and repent, but this is not Plan A. Plan A is to not think about sinning for one second. When we play games with this, we cloud our minds and weaken our wills, and life becomes one long and often depressing struggle, an exhausting trail of ups and downs. By God’s grace, we can escape the consequences of our oft-repeated foolishness, but this makes everything a lot tougher, bringing our ultimate victory into doubt by tempting us to lose hope in the Lord’s mercy.
The Fathers’ exhortation to reject the sinful thought immediately, without thinking about it for one second, is tied to their exhortation to pray always, and especially to say the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner.” If the sweetest Name of Jesus Christ is always on our lips and in our minds and hearts, we will hate sin and never compromise with it.
St. Theophan the Recluse (who fittingly reposed on the feast of Theophany), illustrates this surefire method with a fitting metaphor:
What do we do when attacked by some criminal? We strike out at him and shout for help. Our cries are answered by the police, who then rescue us from danger. We must do the same in inner warfare with the passions. Filled with anger against them, call for assistance: Help me, O Lord! Jesus Christ, Son of God, save me! O God, make speed to save me! O Lord, make haste to help me! Having thus called on the Lord, do not allow your attention to wander from Him, do not let it turn to what is happening within you, but go on standing before the Lord and imploring His help. This will make the enemy run away as though pursued by flames.
Without entering into altercation with passionate thoughts, let us turn directly to God, with fear, devotion, and trust, surrendering ourselves to His influence. By doing this we already push everything passionate away from our mind’s eye, and look only at the Lord. Because we pay no attention to it, the passionate thought is cut off from the soul: it withdraws of its own accord if it has been aroused by some natural cause. But if the enemy is also present in it, he is struck down by the ray of inner light which comes from contemplation of the Lord. Thus as soon as the soul turns to God and appeals to Him, it is freed from the onslaught of passions. – The Art of Prayer, p. 219
Let us begin each day with the Name of Jesus on our lips, in our minds, and in our hearts, and let us carry this Name with us throughout our waking moments, falling asleep with it on our lips. Though a created human name, the Name of Jesus acquired infinite divine power when all the energies of the divine nature were communicated to every attribute of Our Lord’s sacred humanity in the Incarnation. The Lord, Who has already destroyed Satan’s power over us, will give us every good and perfect spiritual gift, and we will become invincible against the foes that strive against us.
O Lord, Who was baptized for our sake, and Who endured temptation as a man for our sake, glory be to Thee!
