Turning rocks into bread: Nourishing the body without the soul. It is a powerful temptation and it is common in our time. That is the source of communism. The Church teaches that we do have to care for others, but we have two sets of responses
the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It is just as valid a service to God to feed the poor physically as well as it is spiritually. Indeed, one of the curses in the Old Testament is that the people will have a famine of the bread
of life which is the word of God.
The second is forcing the angels to catch him if he throws himself down off the parapet. That is to flaunt his divinity, it is to glorify himself. We have a mission to be humble. Once we fully acknowledge our humanness we can better comprehend
the divine. God made us to be human, we have the temptation to seek what we are not which is to be gods. In fact, that is the first temptation: you will be like gods. We need to embrace the fullness of our humanity and in doing so, we
will come to appreciate it and God’s action in our lives. We cannot do that if we are always trying to be what we are not.
The third temptation has a fascinating element to it. The devil proclaims that all worldly authority has been given over to him and Jesus does not deny it. Never forget that, especially in an election year. If we turn from God then we will
end up walking down a path that will lead us away from God personally and as a nation. There is no middle ground.
One of the most fascinating things I learned in some of my reading comes from Chris Hedges in his book: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America’s New Fundamentalists, (2009;Free Press) where he points out that at least one of the world class
atheists quoted often by the media believed in a nuclear pre-emptive first strike against the Muslim nations to prevent terrorism. Catholic doctrine rooted in the teaching of St. Augustine does not believe in a pre-emptive first strike
of any type ever.
But if you reject the wisdom of God, your only response is to embrace the wisdom of the world and the devil himself teaches that this wisdom belongs to him.
When we are people of prayer and root ourselves in Christ then in God we have the wisdom to see through the wiles of the devil.
