Gospel for Sunday, March 09: I Sunday of Lent Year C – Luke 4:1-13
1 Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, departed from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness 2 where, for forty days, he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days; but when they were finished he was hungry. 3 Then the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.” 5 The devil led him on high and, showing him in an instant all the kingdoms of the earth, said to him, 6 “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been put into my hands, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you prostrate yourself before me everything will be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, Only to the Lord your God shall you bow down; him alone shall you worship.” 9 He led him to Jerusalem, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; 10 for it is written:
To his angels he will give orders for you,
that they may guard thee;
11 and also:
they will support you with their hands,
that thy foot stumble not upon a stone.”
12 Jesus answered him, “It has been said, You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” 13 After he had exhausted every kind of temptation, the devil departed from him to return at the appointed time.Lk 4:1-13
Dear sisters and brothers of Misericordia, I am Carlo Miglietta, a doctor, biblical scholar, layman, husband, father and grandfather (www.buonabibbiaatutti.it). Also today I share with you a short thought meditation on the Gospel, with special reference to the theme of mercy.
Here is an element of apostolic preaching: in a pictorial, thus symbolic image, Christ’s solidarity with man is expressed first, and then his victory over evil.
“He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness”
Beautiful is this verse. It is the Spirit of God: it is God who made us limited, who made us creatures, in order to have a partner in love who was other than himself, he who the infinite, the limitless, the eternal; he made man with a creaturely limit, so that he could converse with him in love, so that he could be different from him, so that man is limited, subject to trial, subject to temptation.
So it is the Spirit who allows the test, so that we can allow ourselves to respond in love to God’s love. God does not take us by the neck, God does not rape us. God offers us his Love and has made us capable of adhering to his love or even rejecting it. In the positive exercise of freedom we are allowed to prove that we are faithful to him.
The desert is the place of trial, of the struggle against evil spirits; it is the place where we are far from the riches of this world, we are far from everything, from everyday life. It is also the place of encounter with God, the place where we can listen to his voice, dialogue with him, relate to him; it is the place where we can “make love” to God. But it is also the place of trial, the place where we can regret the onions of Egypt, regret the flesh of Pharaoh, where we curse that we came out of the land of slavery of Egypt, where we do not believe that we will get to the Promised Land, the place where we can make the idol of the golden calf, and also the place where we face the struggle against the enemies, the enemies of Israel.
We, too, have our deserts, our difficulties, the longing sometimes for slavery, the fear of freedom: it is a time we all go through, and it is there, in the trial, that we see whether we love the Lord: it is not when everything goes well, it is when the difficulties begin that we have to say, “Lord I believe in you. I believe that this life, although creaturely, therefore limited, therefore with the experience of sickness and anguish, is your gift. Despite everything I believe it is your gift. Because life is important not because it is full of health, full of wealth, but because it is the moment when I can say, “I love you,” or, “I don’t love you”: then every life takes on value, even the life of the handicapped, even the life of the terminally ill.
Here is the difference between the logic of the world and the logic of the Christian. In the logic of the world, life has value because of what you possess. In the logic of the Christian, life has value in its finitude because it is part of being a creature. Life always has value because it is the moment of encounter with God, and the moment when I can say, “I love you” to God who says, “I love you.” Regardless of whether I have two legs or one leg or none. Regardless of whether I am well or terminally ill.
“For forty days, he was tempted by the devil”
Jesus is tempted for forty days. Forty is a symbolic number by which God’s appointed time is meant: not only in biblical writings, but also in other Hebrew writings the number forty often recurs as a symbol to define a time appointed by God: Israel is in the desert forty years. This is the classic time of fasting: in much of Scripture, forty days of fasting is always mentioned.
Jesus is tempted by Satan: but who is this Satan? Satan, in the earliest books of the Old Testament, is the prosecutor, not the villain, but he is the angel is so faithful to the law, in love with the law, that he continually, before God, accuses sinful men.
Israel is found Satan continually accusing him of his sins, out of loyalty to the Law. There is a literary genre of the Trial of IHWH: that is, IHWH calls the nations, one by one: in such a trial the accuser is Satan, the one who says, “IHWH, punish Israel because she has sinned,” thus the Public Minister. The latter soon becomes the adversary. At the time of Jesus, especially by a certain rabbinic theology also due to particular Persian influences, demons are described as fallen angels: but the story of fallen angels is not explicitly in the Bible: it has no biblical basis.
Some assert that these demons would be the sons of God who married the daughters of man (Gen 6), however at the time of Jesus these creatures are thought to exist, who at first accused Israel because they were in love with the law, then at some point they began to be adversaries. Here in the A.T. from being an accuser he becomes an adversary, he becomes the enemy of man, not only the one who accuses Israel before God, but the one who tempts Israel, who enjoys seeing Israel in trouble.
The rabbis, taking up the idea of Persian origin, think of these demons as negative figures who foment evil among men and become to some extent 1 God’s adversary.
The Greek name is “diaballo,” which means “I divide”: demons are the dividers, because they are those who divide man from God, divide men ago of them and divide man within himself. That is, they are the cause of our schizophrenias, our inner divisions, our anxieties, our anxieties. If we notice, often in the New Testament demons are described in collective terms: “Seven demons came out of him”; “What is your name?” Jesus asks a demon; and he is given for answer the name “Legion,” which means “group.” The forces of evil in us cause internal fractures, anxiety, schizophrenia.
Hebrew letters have a numerical value, like Roman numerals (L is worth fifty, X is worth 10, etc.). The name “Satan,” written in Hebrew, is equivalent to the number 364, which are the days of the year minus one, the day of Kippur or the Feast of Atonement, to mean that our whole life, our whole reality, is under this sign of evil.
Jesus fits into the culture of his time, and he means by Satan, evil, two things:
(a) Satan is not 1 origin of evil, he is not an anti-God, much less an evil god who opposes a good God. For the Bible is not a deity, a metaphysical principle of evil: it is stated emphatically right away in Genesis that he is one of the “chajjat hassadeh,” “wild beasts” (Gen 3:1: cf.2:19.20), an animal, a creature. Even the literary genre of the tale of the tempter serpent does not allow us to make it a theological reading on the origins of evil: rather, it is an etiological saga to explain why among so many animals considered a “good thing” there is one that has always and by all (and especially … by women, cf. Gen 3:15!) been considered disgusting and unclean. With this representation evil is demythicized, it is dedivinized, it is represented in a “being of the field,” that is, belonging to the reality of things that are not in God; but it is a being that is distinguished by its “cunning,” that exerts a power and force of seduction, that represents a dominant. It possesses an inherent malice that it exercises through temptation by acting within the sphere of creation: it is not a competing deity with God… Genesis clearly tells us that Satan is a beast, one of the beasts of the earth, the serpent that crawled, thus a creature. He is not an evil power: he is a free creature who votes against, who does not pull on God’s side, but he is not the origin and source of evil.
Jesus, taking the culture of his time, sees as prey to these evil forces, symbolized by the figures of demons, the sick, they will often be called the possessed: that is, they are people who are under this influence of evil forces. They are called unclean spirits because they are contrary to God: God is holy, God is the Holy One, and what is not Holy is not pure and therefore far from God.
The Reformed Churches have always interpreted demons only in a symbolic sense. The Catholic Church, based on these passages, has always proposed the existence of these demons as real people: but, let us remember, they are subordinate realities. Let us not give them much space! We too are Satan: when we are against God, when we sin, when we instead of setting a good example set a bad example, we do the same thing the devil does.
He is not an occult force with who knows what tremendous strength: he is a beast of the forest, as Genesis says, and he is absolutely vanquished by the Lord’s Resurrection. Jesus will say this in so many passages where he talks about demons: he will say that he is the strongest, and he will definitely overcome demons, and demons were definitely defeated in the passion death and resurrection of Jesus.
So, in a civilization like today’s, where people believe in sorceresses to magicians, “black masses,” and stories like that, we need to strongly reaffirm that the Christian religion is not the religion of the devil. which is just a beast, but that it is the religion of Jesus Christ, Son of God who, by dying on the Cross and rising again, definitively conquers evil, sickness, sin, and death.
Temptations
The temptations, if we look closely, are always the choice between serving and being served.
The first temptation is that of using goods: “Turn these stones into bread”: so everyone will say, “Oh, how good! You are Son of God!”
The second temptation is that of riches: “Worship me, and all the world will be yours.”
The third temptation is that of spectacular gestures: “Throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple.”
And we notice: all for good. How often we sin for good, how often the Church is tempted to use the goods of this world for the greater glory of the Kingdom of God. So many times the Church loves to make spectacular gestures for the greater glory of the Kingdom of God. Let us remember that the Church is us: how often do we hear from believers this mentality, “Ah! If I become important, if I get ahead I will do more good.” This is not the logic of the Gospel.
So many times for good we really commit sins. So many times we sense it from the speeches we hear even in the community, such as quantifying the number of Christians, or, “The more Christians go to power, the more good they will do”-not true!
The more Christians suffer, the more Christians put themselves in last place, the more Christians truly choose the way of emptying, the way of the cross of Christ, the more the seed, dying, bears fruit.
It is another logic. Sin is always a temptation between serving and serving, even if we sometimes choose serving for good. It is precisely for the sake of good that evil is sometimes done. Instead, the logic of the Gospel is to stand in line with sinners, to take up the cross, to die crucified.
Let us be led by the Holy Spirit, this Spirit who fills Jesus, this Spirit who is with him in trial. We have the Spirit of God with us! God’s Spirit guides us, gives us the strength to flee from sin, and to say, “I love you!” to his, “I love you!” The Lord accompanies us every moment with his Spirit.
Happy Mercy to all!
Anyone who would like to read a more complete exegesis of the text, or some insights, please ask me at migliettacarlo@gmail.com.