On through the wilderness with Jesus: what does Scripture have to say to us today?
Fr David Howell• March 9, 2025
“Brothers and Sisters: What does Scripture say?” (Romans 10:8)
In today’s second reading, St Paul asks this question, and it is one that we can repeat to find responses to the challenges we face: God’s inspired Word guides us.
Jesus himself gives us this example during His temptations in the desert: He replied to the devil’s snares with three quotations from Deuteronomy. Even when the devil misused a psalm to tempt Jesus, He kept using Scripture to refute these lies. There was no strict need for Jesus to do this – every word He spoke was divine and inspired – but He chose to use the words of the Old Testament rather than His own. This shows us the potency of the Word of God, a weapon put into our hands, “sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). When I face temptation, do I turn to the Bible for wisdom and strength?
The experience of temptation should not discourage us: it is a sign that we are “filled with the Holy Spirit” like Jesus and being “led” by the Spirit (Luke 4:1). The purpose of it is to prepare us for mission, as Jesus’s trials were a prelude to His public ministry.
The content of our temptations is often predictable. Unlike the varied creativity of love, sin is boring, repetitive and comes in three kinds: disordered desire for bodily pleasure, for honour and for power. In other words, failure to love myself authentically, to love others or to love God. Fasting helps us love ourselves, charity helps us love others and prayer helps us love God. These three temptations are what Jesus faced in the desert – the devil “completed every temptation” (Luke 4:13) – and through them He “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Hebrews 4:15).
The devil was to return at an “opportune time” (4:13), the Last Supper, when “Satan entered into Judas” (22:3) and Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (23:31-32). This Lent we can ask for the grace to respond to temptation like Simon Peter, and not like Judas, to trust in the prayer and example of Jesus, and not to despair.
Jesus must have told someone about His temptations alone in the desert, who then related the details to Luke for his Gospel account. Perhaps he told Mary, his mother, about what happened. We too can talk to Mary about our temptations, and also receive her tender encouragement.