Saturday after Theophany. Holy Martyrs Hermylus and Stratonicus (313-24).
Ephesians 6:10-17. Matthew 4:1-11.
Read Matthew 4:1-11
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
In our unseen spiritual warfare we might quite falsely think that the aim of our spiritual struggle is to reach some kind of perfect stage in which we will no longer be a subject to any temptations. However, sooner or later we would inevitably come to the realization that this kind of thinking is nothing else, but an illusion. Even Jesus, as a human being, has never reached that stage. He was tempted in the desert right after his baptism in the Jordan river (for that reason we have this reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew assigned for Saturday after the feast of Theophany). He was tempted again by Peter on their way to Caesarea Philippi, when His closest disciple who just admitted that Jesus is the Son of God, at the very same time wanted to prevent Him from following the will of God. Finally, Jesus was tempted on the Mount of Olives before His arrest, trial and crucifixion. Temptations will constantly accompany us on our way to salvation. Therefore, together with Thomas Jefferson we can only admit that “”Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” Maybe he said this in a different context, but it is also true about our spiritual life.
Yet, if we want to look at the very phenomena of temptation from the Biblical perspective, we might want to look at the original meaning of the word “temptation” in Greek. While in English the word to “tempt” has evident negative meaning, in Greek the word πειράζω (peiradzo) means to “put someone under the test.” For instance, Abraham was “tested” when he was commanded to sacrifice his son Issac. There was a Jewish saying, in accordance to which “God raises a righteous man to dignity only after testing him and seeing that he stands in temptation.” So, Jesus firmly stood in temptation in the desert not by his human wisdom, but by the word of God. Everytime He gives an answer to the tempter, He does not engage in the dialogue with the Evil One (as did the first Adam in the Garden of Eden), but He defeats the devil buy saying: “It is written.”
Satan tempts Jesus simply to adopt the common Jewish understanding of the Messiah as someone who will become a king allowing “no one to hunger of thirst” (Isaiah 49,10), who will “suddenly appear on the top of the Temple” (Malachi 3,1), and even if He jumps from the top he will be carried by the angels (Psalms 91, 11-12), and who “will make the nations his heritage, and the ends of the earth his possessions (Psalms 2,8). Yet, Jesus refuses to use his powers for his own sake, and declines the proposal to test God or to worship the Evil One, by citing the book of Deuteronomy according to which man “does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8,3), man “shall not put the Lord his God to the test” (Deut. 6, 16), and finally, man “shall serve the Lord his God and swear by his name” (Deut. 6, 13). Therefore, our human knowledge can not defeat Satan, but the Word of God can.