![]() Secondly, and more importantly, Christ went into the desert to prove that he is who he says he is namely, that he truly is the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come to take away the sins of the world, who has come to do his Father’s will. Augustine puts is, a “Mediator in overcoming temptations, not only by helping us, but also by giving us an example.” In other words, Jesus becomes a New Adam and redeems the failure of man to obey God’s commands. This brings us back to the question: Why did Jesus go into the desert? The answer is twofold: In withstanding the devil’s trials, Christ fulfilled what Adam could not, even in his fallen state as a man, thus becoming, as St. When Jesus’ time in the desert came to an end, the story closes: “Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him” (Mt 4:11). ![]() He was tired, hungry and weary, just as any of us would be from wandering in the desert, but even in his humanity, Christ prevailed. The main difference, of course, is that Jesus rebuked Satan with each temptation and relied completely and utterly on God the Father to withstand them. The three temptations which Christ experienced in the desert echo the temptations that Adam and Eve gave into at the Garden of Eden: eating forbidden food, false worship and testing God. Temptation is a recurring theme of the Christian life in fact, it was Adam and Eve’s failure to resist temptation that caused sin to enter the perfect world God made in the first place. Again, there are no coincidences in Jesus’ life, and it’s certainly not by chance that Jesus went into the desert immediately after the Holy Spirit reveals who Jesus is: “After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove coming upon him” (Mt 3:16-17). Every Christian likely knows the story following his baptism, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert, where he is tempted by Satan for 40 days. The Temptation of Christ is told in the fourth chapter of Matthew’s gospel. It’s no coincidence that there are 40 days in Lent as the Catechism states: “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (CCC 540). The season of Lent is meant to draw us into to Christ’s temptation in the desert not only spiritually through prayer and almsgiving but also physically through periods of fasting and denying ourselves temporal pleasures. Lent comes and goes each year, but how often do we actually think about why Jesus went into the desert in the first place? Her friend replied, “Well…why did Jesus have to go into the desert?”Ī deep and profound question, especially coming from someone who isn’t Catholic. She took the opportunity to tell her friend about Lent and how it represents Jesus’ 40 days spent in the desert. On Ash Wednesday, my wife was speaking to one of her co-workers who was confused by the ash crosses she was seeing on people’s heads that day.
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