Go back to the picture of Our Blessed Lord as He stood in the untenanted wilderness which stretches southward from Jericho to the Dead Sea. There His forerunner John with bronzed countenance, unshorn locks, leather girdle and mantle of camel's hair whose drink was the water of the river and whose food was locust and wild honey, saw the heavens open and the Spirit of God descend in dove-like radiance over his Master's Head, as there rang out over the Jordan river a voice which to unpurged ears was like thunder: "You are my Son, in you I am well pleased". - Luke 3:22 -

With the waters still dripping from His head, Our Lord went out into the solitude to put a desert between Himself and humanity. For forty years the Jewish people wandered in the desert before entering into the kingdom promised by God. For forty days Moses remained close to God to receive His law on tablets of stone. Now, before announcing His Kingdom, to which Moses and the chosen people had pointed, Our Blessed Saviour retires for forty days into the lonely mountains where no human face to be seen and where no human voice was to be heard.

After forty days of fasting, He was tempted by Satan. Tempted He could be, for He had taken the armour of human flesh, not for idleness but for battle. Oh! Do not mock the Gospels and say there is no Satan. Evil is too real in the world to say that. Do not say the idea of Satan is dead and gone. Satan never gains so many cohorts, as when, in his shrewdness, he spreads the rumour that he is long since dead. Do not reject the Gospel because it says the Saviour was tempted. Satan always tempt the pure - the others are already his. Satan stations more devils on monastery walls than in dens of iniquity, for the latter offer no resistance. Do not say it was absurd that Satan should appear to Our Lord, for Satan must always come close to the godly and the strong - the others succumb from a distance.

But in what did Satan tempt Christ? Here is the remarkable side of that temptation and one which has such a bearing on our own day. Satan tempted Our Blessed Lord to preach another religion than that which He was about to preach. Our Lord was about to preach a divine religion. Satan tempted Him to preach a religion that was not divine but a religion which the modern world calls 'New!' In a word the three temptations of Satan against Christ are the three temptations of the world against the Church today, namely, to make religion: social, political and worldly.

Satan first tempted Our Lord to make religion social: to make it centre about the materialistic of life such as bread for starving bodies like His own. Pointing from the top of the mountain to the stones whose shapes resembled little loaves of bread, he said: "Tell these stones to become loaves of bread". - Matt. 4:3 - It was Satan's challenge to God to make religion centre around the materialistic of life. But the answer of Our Blessed Lord was immediate: "Not by bread alone shall man live but by every utterance proceeding from the mouth of God". - Matt. 4:4 -

By that response, Our Lord declared that religion is not social, in the sense that its primary function is to give food to the body but rather divine, in the sense that it must give food to the soul. Men must have bread! There is no disputing on that point. Our Lord taught us to ask the Father to "give us this daily bread"; He even went so far when men were in dire need of it in the desert places, to multiply bread even to excess. But beyond that He told the thousands at Capernaum, He would not go. "You seek me... because you ate of the loaves and were satisfied. Labour not for food that perishes but for food that remains for life eternal". - John 6:26-27 - Religion is not purely social.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -