In the late 1980s a somewhat controversial movie came out called The Last Temptation of Christ. This movie was about Christ entertaining a temptation by Satan at Gethsemane to reject His vocation, to reject the cross, in effect, to reject the will of His Father and just live out His life as a normal man.
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(Fr Augustine H.T. Tran attended seminary at the North American College in Rome, Italy and was ordained to the priesthood in 1998. He serves in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, and is currently in residence at St. John Catholic Church in McLean, Virginia, while he completes a Canon Law Degree at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He may be contacted via e-mail at [email protected].)
One of the controversial aspects of the movie was that it seemed to portray our Lord entertaining sinful thoughts, and, as we all know, once we begin to entertain sinful thoughts, we have already begun to sin. But, of course, our Lord was sinless, so how could He have entertained such thoughts?
As is often the case, the makers of the movie did not do a very good job of explaining Christian theology. In particular, they did not seem to understand what we mean when we say that Christ was tempted by Satan. Pope St Gregory the Great said, “[t]emptation is brought to fulfillment by three stages: suggestion, delight, [and] consent” (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, New Testament, Vol II, Mark, p. 17). Suggestion comes at us from without. It is the thought that Satan places within our mind to lead us into sin. It is not something that we can control, and, hence, it is not something for which we can be held accountable. In other words, when we encounter this beginning phase of temptation, we are not yet sinning because we have not actually done anything; someone else is doing something to us from without.
Unfortunately, what sometimes happens is that we begin to take delight in that suggestion, and then we consent to acting upon it. So, delight and consent come from within us, which means that at that point we have begun to act upon the suggestion, we have started to entertain the suggestion and let it entertain us, which means that we have begun to sin, perhaps venially, perhaps mortally, depending upon how grave the matter is.
When we speak, then, of Christ being tempted by Satan, we are speaking about the suggestion, the temptation from without, that first stage of temptation for which one is never culpable. Hence, Christ could be tempted but still never sin, for our Blessed Lord did not take delight in or consent to the suggestion.
The Fathers of the Church saw Christ's actions in the desert as an example of how we, too, can overcome sin in the face of temptation. Christ does not use any divine or supernatural powers to overcome Satan. According to the Fathers of the Church, He was acting in His human nature alone, and was still able to overcome the temptations of Satan, demonstrating for us that it is not an impossible task, that the suggestion need not lead to delight and consent.
Christ did however, have supernatural help. In the Gospel of Mark, we read of how “the angels ministered to him” (Mk 1:13); but the actions that Christ Himself performed were not supernatural. We, too, have that same supernatural help in our struggles with temptations. We have the assistance of our guardian angels, of our patron saints, of the whole Church Triumphant, and of the supernatural grace that we receive from the worthy reception of the sacraments. It is up to us to follow the example of Christ and avail ourselves of that supernatural assistance, to turn to prayer and fasting as our recourse in the face of temptations. Fasting, in the Christian tradition, does not mean just abstaining from food, but also other pleasures, such as television, music or video games. It is any form of self-denial or mortification.
During this season of Lent, we spend forty days imitating the self-denial that Christ went through in the desert. We sacrifice certain pleasures because that self-denial helps us to detach from the world. Worldly goods are not in and of themselves evil, for they are part of God's creation. In fact, if they were evil, then it would not be a mortification to give them up, for we are not supposed to have them in the first place. Contrary to what Hollywood might want to say about these forty days and forty nights, we do not grow in the spiritual life by giving up a sin for Lent. Sin is something we avoid year-round. Self-denial means denying ourselves a good, not an evil.
When we deny ourselves of certain worldly goods, we see that while they are good, they are not necessary in our life, and, hence, we can detach ourselves from them. This not only prepares us for death, which is the ultimate detachment from all worldly goods, but it also helps us in our battle against the temptations of Satan, because it is precisely these worldly goods that he uses to tempt us with: food, drink, sex, money, human respect. Just as God can make good come from evil, so, too, does Satan use goods to lead us into evil.
Through daily mortifications, we do not claim that these goods are in fact evil, but rather that they are in fact not necessary. The more detached we are from the unnecessary things, the more attached we can become to the one necessary being.
It would seem that when we deny ourselves, when we fast, we become weaker, and hence more susceptible to sin, but, in fact, the exact opposite happens. We are strengthened by our mortifications, for the will grows stronger. That does not mean that we become more willful, but rather less willful, for it takes great strength to humbly submit our wills to that of God. We need a strong will to fight against our tendency towards pride, the original and mother of all sins.
Consider the analogy of our military men who are trained to survive in war. In the most strenuous parts of their training, they are deprived of food and rest, yet, they become stronger for it, for they have strengthened their will. Yet, through that training, they also learn to be obedient to their superiors.
There is no doubt that we are in a spiritual battle while wayfaring, which is why we are called the Church Militant. This yearly season of Lent is a time for us to be retrained in how to use the gifts, the weapons, if you will, that God gives us in this daily struggle.
