Temptation’s Faces

In the movie Oh God, You Devil the roles of both God and Satan were played by George Burns. This completely baffled the humans. But as “God” pointed out, the face of evil has long tried to look like God, act like God, sound like God—or at least fulfill all our expectations of what God is like and desires. This is the aspect of Jesus’ human nature that Satan attempts to prey upon in today’s Gospel. It is in our human nature to seek the easy or surface answers; it was this part of Jesus’ true human nature that was tested in the desert dryness that immediately followed his plunge into the Jordan’s baptismal waters.

Our surface expectations of God are in miracle-working, power and glory, the intervention of supernatural beings on our behalf. But all of these things can be accomplished by the might of evil as well. Jesus takes us deeper and shows us that, even when we’re at our weakest (as he would have been in the desert after his forty-day ordeal), we need to be relentless in seeking the true presence of God’s word, giving our worship to God alone, testing ourselves and not God.

Lenten Prayer

God of compassion, May our prayers,
challenge us to love and embrace those
who are poor and vulnerable.
May our fasting
challenge s us to live
simply and be better stewards
of Your creation;
May our almsgiving
challenge us to give generously
to those in need.
Amen!