Many of us think that once Our Lord faced down Satan in the wilderness He was free and clear and the Adversary left Him alone after that. However, in our Gospel reading at Mass today,[1] St. Luke gives us the impression that maybe that didn't close the book on diabolical enticement of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Some movies took up that premise and ran with it. Remember Kazantsakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, brought to the screen by Scorsese? That particular film, exploring the "what if's" that may have coursed through the mind of Our Lord on the Cross excited much outrage, debate, and even further speculation. Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was no less controversial, but held closer to the line of tradition, presenting the temptations throughout the ministry with a very dark showdown with a very creepy Satan in the Garden of Gethsemane.
These speculations hinge on St. Luke stating that, "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time."[2] The implication, that these filmmakers ran with, is that the Adversary was not finished, and that he would bide his time until another occasion would present itself for him to derail God's plan. After all, while Our Lord was physically vulnerable after fasting forty days, it would not be the only time He was vulnerable.
So it is with us. We live with temptation daily. If baptized as infants, we are presented with it immediately upon us being capable of moral choice, whenever that is (individual results may vary...). If baptized after the age of reason or as adults, it is staggering how quickly the temptations roll in. At the beginning of our lives in Christ, the Adversary loses zero opportunity to derail the good work of Christ in us, nor is it restricted to the beginning. As with our Lord, Satan waits for "an opportune time" to waylay us and present us with a new temptation to sin. If he waited until an "opportune time" to beset Our Lord again, then why would we think we would be exempt? Indeed, as we are not exempt, it would make sense that the temptation in the wilderness was not the end of it, otherwise how could the claim be made that, "...we have [a high priest, i.e. Jesus] who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin."[3]
What these other temptations were we can only infer by reading between the lines of the Gospel, and truly the Evangelists believed it important only to provide three examples from the beginning, examples of temptation based on physical drives (the rocks into loaves),[4] mental impulses (the desire for power),[5] and spiritual certainty (inducing danger to force God's hand).[6] Human history is full of yielding to temptation, a symptom of the corruption of our nature, but in Jesus the Evangelists show that he met these head-on and one, setting the counter back and laying the groundwork for our atonement and salvation. Regardless of it happening once or many times until His Death and Passion, the story here is that Our Lord met all of our challenges, faced our difficulties, and did so many times, just not three times. It was His victory over all of them that provided us with the Sinless One through whom we could be saved.
[1] St. Luke 4.1-13
[2] St. Luke 4.13
[3] Heb. 4.15
[4] St. Luke 4.3
[5] St. Luke 4.6
[6] St. Luke 4.9-10
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