What does Christ’s victory in the desert mean for us?
Christ did not just resist Satan's temptations, and then continue as if nothing had happened. This episode represents an important victory for him—and us.
Christ did not just resist Satan's temptations, and then continue as if nothing had happened. This episode represents an important victory for him—and us.
Editor’s Notes
The Gospel of the First Sunday of Lent recounts Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, fasting and being tempted by the Devil. This takes place immediately after Christ’s baptism by St John the Baptist, and precedes the beginning of his public ministry.
However, popular adaptations of the Life of Christ tend to end their presentations of this event (if they include it) with the final temptation. In so doing, they neglect to consider…
The victory which Christ has achieved
A third, important aspect of this episode—that angels came to Christ and ministered to him.
In this piece, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ triumphs over his enemy
That this victory has lasting consequences for the faithful
Why the angels ministering to him after his trial should encourage us today.
In the next part, we will consider these ministering angels further, and see how they demonstrate that divine consolation follows steadfast resistance to Satan.
The Ministering Angels
The Ministry of St. John the Baptist
Chapter VI
St. Matt. iv. 11; St. Mark i. 13; St. Luke iv. 13.
Story of the Gospels, § 18
Burns and Oates, London, 1888
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on First Sunday of Lent
Part I: What does Christ’s victory in the desert mean for us?
Part II: The most overlooked part of Christ's forty days in the desert
Angels attending on our Lord
The two first Evangelists add to their account of the temptation of our Lord the statement that when Satan departed, in defeat and confusion, the Angels approached and ministered to our Lord.
And it is remarkable, that if we had only St. Mark’s account, which is a summary and not a narrative, as he does not give the particulars of the several temptations, we might imagine that the ministration of the Angels continued the whole time of the forty days, like the temptations of Satan, and the companionship of our Lord with the wild animals in that rude solitude.
We may at all events gather from the mention of the circumstance by St. Mark that it is one of the great features of the mystery of the temptation, and that it may well be made the subject of separate and careful consideration.
Departure of Satan
St. Luke tells us, in the first instance, that all the temptations being ended, the devil departed from Him for a season.
Satan had run through the whole range of his contrivances for the seduction and deception of mankind in vain, for he had tempted every appetite, he had tried his power of illusion, he had even been permitted to transport our Lord from place to place, and he had also endeavoured to mislead Him by a false application of that very Word of God which our Lord Himself had uniformly appealed to, to foil His adversary.
In doing this, Satan had covered the whole ground from which he assails the children of the Church, and by being defeated on every point by One Whom he had no right to provoke and assail, he has lost his strength and boldness and freedom in addressing the same temptations to those who are united to our Blessed Lord, Who conquered him everywhere.
His display of character
In the course of the struggle, moreover, Satan had been forced to display his own character: his hypocrisy, and mendacity, and vanity, and pride, his hatred of God, his lust for homage and adoration, and, in the last temptation, his habit of unblushing perversion of sacred authorities, and his cruelty, for if our Lord had been a mere man, the suggestion which he made to Him would have issued in suicide and destruction.
It now remained for him, in the counsels of God, to show his cowardice, and how, when he is calmly resisted, he takes to flight, for though his determined and inveterate malice supplies in him the place of patience and perseverance, still there is something womanly, as St. Ignatius has remarked, about his bearing, when he sees that those whom he assails are not afraid of him, and do not intend to yield to him an inch.
So he fled away, ‘leaving our Lord for a season,’ as the Evangelist tells us, for his retirement was not out of any change of purpose or relenting in his hostility, but because he felt himself defeated and was ashamed to run the risk of continual overthrows.
How he afterwards attacked Our Lord
In what way it was that Satan renewed his assaults upon our Lord Himself we are not told, and can only gather from a few words which occur here and there in the Gospels. But we may be certain that he now determined to oppose Him in every way, but by the means of others whom he made his instruments, and that henceforth he was the chief mover in the opposition and persecution which afterwards arose against our Lord, that the calumnies set in circulation against Him were his work, and that such devices as the evil counsel of Caiaphas and the traitorous design of Judas were the masterpieces of his ingenuity.
Just before His Passion, our Lord told His disciples, ‘The prince of this world cometh, and in Me he hath not anything,’1 and from this we may conjecture that Satan returned more particularly to attack Him at that time, and that that may be the meaning of the departure for a season of which St. Luke speaks.
Then he may have tried once more to molest our Blessed Lord Himself with more direct assaults, though there must have been many before that time, because our Lord, at the Last Supper, also speaks to His disciples as to those ‘who remained with Him in His temptations,’ as if the whole of His course had been a series of such trials. But now, after the severe conflict which had lasted for forty days and forty nights, the time for peace and consolation had come, and so Satan was chased away to leave our Lord unmolested.
Our Lord’s ministering Angels
If it be true that the last of the three temptations in order of time is that which St. Luke has placed last, then it would seem as if our Lord had been left by Satan on the giddy pinnacle of the Temple, where he is said to have ‘set Him,’ as if it were a place that could not be reached in an ordinary way.
It was in our Lord’s power either to compel the tempter to remove Him from the spot, or to descend of Himself, as He could pass through the crowd or walk upon the waters, or to allow His own blessed angels to assist Him. The words used by the Evangelist, that the angels came and ministered to Him, seem to imply that they were angels who were ordinarily in attendance on our Lord, but that it had been His will that they should withdraw for a time, in order that in the weakness and humility of His Human Nature He might battle with the foe, and triumph over him more gloriously in consequence of the absence of all aid from the angels.
For the angels have the power to check and curb the enemies of our souls, who fly away from their presence for fear of punishment from them. Our Lord, Who was the Head of angels as well as of men, Who was perfectly impeccable and in no danger from the assaults of hell, had not, like men in general, a Guardian Angel in the usual sense of the term, but He had a number of angels who were more specially deputed to wait upon Him, and whose services He used at His will.2
They were, as it were, the immediate servants and guards of His Sacred Humanity, and we may well imagine the burning devotion with which they regarded it, inasmuch as therein was fulfilled that wonderful mystery of God’s counsel which had been set before them at the beginning, by allegiance and humble homage to which their own crowns were won, and which was also to be the means through which the ruin which rebellion had brought into their own ranks was to be repaired. These faithful ministers of our Lord’s will had watched Him most closely from the first, rendering Him the homage and adoration which were due to Him, and rejoicing in and glorifying God for all the marvels of sanctity and wisdom which were displayed in Him.
At the time of His conflict with the Evil One, they had, as has been said, been held aloof, that Satan might be conquered by our Lord alone, and now that the victory was won, they approached in joy and triumph, to bear Him, it may be, from the pinnacle on which He had been placed, and to attend Him on His return to His cave on the mountain side in which He had passed the forty days and forty nights.
Having considered the implications of Christ’s victory, the role of Angels as witnesses and servants of His triumph takes centre stage. Following the trial, how did they minister to the victorious Christ, and what does this reveal about their role in the spiritual life of the faithful?
Find out in Part II, and hit subscribe to make sure you don’t miss it:
The Ministering Angels
Part I: What does Christ’s victory in the desert mean for us?
Part II: The most overlooked part of Christ's forty days in the desert
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St. John xiv. 30.
See Suarez, De Angelis, lib. vi. c. 17, n. 21.