First Sunday in Lent (Year A)

(Mt 4:1-1)

Matthew 4:1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Matthew 4:2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Matthew 4:3 The tempter came to him and said, 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.'

Matthew 4:4 But he answered, 'It is written:

Man shall not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'

Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. One may wonder, why would the Spirit lead someone into a dangerous situation? There is no doubt here that it is the Holy Spirit who pushes Jesus to confront the devil, and thus all the false expectations of the time regarding the figure of the Messiah, which we now understand were diabolical expectations.  

The Greek term for temptation is 'peirazō', which mainly means 'to test, to examine', but also 'to tempt' in the moral sense of soliciting evil. The verb can be translated as both testing and tempting. When it is God who performs the action, then we have the sense of testing, because it is something that serves the growth and maturity of the person, so that the person can make a serious assessment of their own life. It is something positive. Even in the Gospels we find that Jesus sometimes tests his disciples to see if they have understood his teachings. When, on the other hand, this verb has Satan as its subject, then we are talking about tempting, about putting the person in a dangerous situation in order to distract them from their duty. In our text, the devil tries to distract Jesus from his messianic task.

'Devil' in Greek means divider, separator, and its Hebrew equivalent, 'satan', means 'adversary'. He is the enemy and adversary of man, who wants to hinder Jesus and also every man on his journey with God. It is like saying: I want to continue on this path, but at a certain point the path is blocked; this is Satan, the devil, someone who wants to lead me astray.

Jesus was led into the desert, west of Jericho, on the Mount of Quarantine. But it is not the geographical location that is important here. The desert represents the place of trial. It is the place where the people of Israel could demonstrate their fidelity to God, or their infidelity; it was the place where man had to verify his choices. It is the place where we can discover the truth, because the real struggle is not so much against someone else, but within ourselves. We can say that the desert is an existential situation for everyone. We find truth only in the desert, because as long as there is someone close to us, we can always say: it was him, it's his fault. But if we are alone, we can only see the evils that are within us. So we need to know how to create the desert, the silence, to go into the truth and not be afraid of the truth. The desert is the place of searching, of journeying, and it is here that we find the devil, that is, the divider, the split, we find evil. This is precisely where the Spirit leads us! We think that the spiritual life is something privileged, but it is exactly the opposite, it leads us into reality, it leads us into temptation, into trial, into doubt, into the difficulty of discerning, of deciding, into struggle.

The verb peiraō (to tempt) also means 'to learn from experience', 'to experience', 'to try', so it is through temptation that man passes through evil, and thus becomes experienced, gains experience. And temptation is suffered by those who have made the right choice. If someone is stealing and is tempted to stop, that is not called temptation, but good inspiration! So we must consider trial and temptation as a place where, if one chooses good, one encounters evil. That is why it is the Spirit who drives us into the desert, that is, it is the Spirit of God himself who drives me to make a choice, to seek clarity, to seek truth.

At the end of forty days and forty nights, Jesus is hungry. This hunger should be interpreted as a state of need. The devil always uses every need to tempt man. Even in families, it is much easier to argue when there are needs than when things are going well, precisely because the devil has the opportunity to get in the way.

"The tempter then approached him." Here the name is changed; we are not talking about the devil but about the tempter. It is an expression used only by Matthew, because the verb "to tempt" is the typical verb that the evangelist will use when speaking of the Pharisees, the high priests and the Sadducees when they go to Jesus to tempt him. They are the ones who carry out the temptations of Jesus. For this reason, the evangelist changes the name and presents Satan as the tempter, to remind us that it will be others acting on behalf of the devil who will tempt Jesus.

The first temptation begins with the proposal: if you are the Son of God, say that these stones become bread. The temptation can be read in different ways: Take advantage of your position for your own good, make these stones satisfy your hunger. If you can do it, do it.

With the necessary exceptions, all temptations are always for the good. None of us does evil because it is evil, but because it seems good to us. Except for those few times - or many times - when we do it out of weakness, when we know it is evil but cannot do otherwise, the serious mistakes are those we make for the good. May God free us from the evil we can do thinking it is good! They are like the just wars of Anglo-Zionist memory: they never end, precisely because they are just! So we must be careful when we act for the sake of good: it is very dangerous! We must not act for the sake of good, we must do what is good. We can be diabolical for the sake of good!

Another interpretation of the temptation is as follows: Jesus is urged to use his authority as the Son of God to bring about a turning point in the history of his people or, if you will, to listen to the messianic expectations of Israel, which was awaiting a political-military and religious messiah, a liberator and restorer of Israel's greatness. From this perspective, the first temptation is that of economic messianism: that is, to think of bringing about the messianic era through earthly economic well-being. In other words, Jesus is tempted to turn stones into bread in order to perform a prodigious act in the eyes of humanity: if he is the Son of God, he will be able to solve the problem of world hunger and be recognised and acclaimed as a benefactor. Fyodor Dostoevsky's reinterpretation of this temptation in "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" is very interesting: "Do you see these stones in the bare, scorched desert? Turn them into bread, and humanity will follow you like a docile and grateful flock."

The first temptation can also be read as a false alternative: either bread or the word. While we say: yes, the word of God is beautiful, but now there is real life, I have to think about this and that. This is a great evil, because if the word of God has nothing to do with real life, God does not exist. In reality, the first thing is the word of God that orders my way of relating to things, and therefore my real life, my bread. In response to the tempter, Jesus reminds him that it is in fidelity to the word of God that man can find the true meaning of his existence.

Argentino Quintavalle, author of the books 

- Apocalypse – exegetical commentary 

- The Apostle Paul and the Judaizers – Law or Gospel?

Jesus Christ, true God and true Man in the mystery of the Trinity

The prophetic discourse of Jesus (Matthew 24-25)

All generations will call me blessed

 Catholics and Protestants in comparison – In defence of the faith

 The Church and Israel according to St Paul – Romans 9-11

(Available on Amazon)