“The snake replied: ‘When you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.’” Genesis 2: 7- 9; 3: 1-7
After being baptised, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Matthew 4: 1-1
Taken together, today’s three readings leave us in no doubt about our moral frailty. While the creation story in the Book of Genesis belongs to the literature of myth, it contains age-old truths about humanity’s capacity to distort its God-given creativity to fit selfish pursuits such as rebellion, violence and greed and, in the process, to smother its awareness of God’s dream for humankind.
Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World) is a foundational document of the Second Vatican Council. It was promulgated by Pope Paul VI in December 1965. In one of its early paragraphs, we read: “Although humankind were created by God in a state of holiness and goodness, from the very onset of their history they abused their liberty, at the urging of the Evil One. Humankind set themselves against God and sought to attain their purpose and goal apart from God. Although they knew God, they did not glorify God as God, but their senseless minds were darkened, and they served the creature rather than the Creator. What divine revelation makes known to us matches our experience.” (#13)
The prelude to today’s first reading describes how Adam and Eve enjoyed an idyllic existence in the Garden of Eden, capped off by a friendly relationship with the God who had created them. It all disintegrated when Eve was accosted by a cunning serpent who argued that the tree in the middle of the garden whose fruit she and Adam had been forbidden to eat really contained God’s power. If they dared to eat the fruit of that tree, their eyes would be opened, they would be like gods and they would know both good and evil. (In Hebrew the verb “to know” means “to experience”.) The crux of the serpent’s argument was that Adam and Eve would be inferior to God if they had no experience of evil. Accordingly, Eve and Adam joined together in bringing disaster on themselves and the whole of humankind after them.
Eve’s temptation is paralleled in the story of Jesus’ temptation contained in today’s gospel-reading. Satan effectively told Jesus that the God, whose mission he had undertaken in faith, was less than trustworthy. The Devil, quoting Psalm 91, went on to say to Jesus: “A God who could send angels to protect you, might not be relied on to repeat the stunt if you were to jump from the top of the temple.” Finally, the Devil tried to get Jesus to succumb to the temptation that has been the stumbling block of countless human beings throughout history, namely self-interest: Showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour, the Devil said: “I will give you all these, if you fall at my feet and worship me.” The prospect of personal gain has led countless human beings to worship the Devil. Jesus’ response was that only the faithful reflection of God’s goodness and love will be productive of universal peace and joy.
The Letter to the Hebrews states clearly that Jesus was “tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). In today’s gospel-reading, Matthew has given a detailed description of the temptation Jesus experienced in the desert before he began his public ministry. The only other time that Matthew refers to Jesus struggling with temptation was when, as he was dying on the Cross, he called out to God, his Father: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46)
I suggest that the ministry of Jesus, sandwiched by these two experiences of temptations, was Matthew’s way of stating that Jesus had to struggle with temptation throughout his entire public life. We know from other Gospel accounts that Jesus battled right up to his very last breath which carried to God his prayer that he had fulfilled his vocation of love for the world: “But Jesus again crying out in a loud voice, yielded up his spirit.” (Matthew 27: 50). That was confirmed by John who recorded Jesus’ final moment on the Cross: “‘It is accomplished’ he said, and bowing his head he gave up his spirit.” (John 19: 30)
Jesus had lived his life for thirty years before stepping out of the security and obscurity of his life in Nazareth to embark on his discerned vocation of ushering in the kingdom of God and actively living out what that meant. Living with integrity, he found the courage to challenge injustice and hypocrisy that were rife in the religious culture of his day, a culture that had lost its way. Despite temptations to give up, temptations driven by hostility, criticism and repeated efforts to entrap him and name him as a heretic, he persisted in the vocation to which he had committed himself. The temptations he experienced in the desert were the very first attempts to derail him from the vocational journey on which he was about to embark. They were temptations to step away from being the one whom Paul described in his letter to the Philippians as the Jesus Christ “whose state was divine, but who did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the quality of a slave, and became as men are; and being as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8)
In today’s second reading from Romans, we hear from Paul the start of a long comparison between Adam and Jesus. By not listening to God, Adam visited on humanity a legacy of chaos, rebellion and self-destruction. Jesus, in contrast, did not sway from listening to God’s Spirit. Listening is the root meaning of obedience. Paul says that, if we can only bring ourselves to listen to the teaching, preaching and the life of Jesus Christ, we will learn something of the love, mercy and compassion of God. If we can succeed at that, we will be able to live in harmony with one another, in appreciation of our created world and in love with the God who has loved us into life. Throughout life, we are faced with temptations to step away from Jesus and his witness to God’s love for us. Whenever we fail, we have his assurance of God’s forgiveness. All we need do is put our faith in Jesus who has experienced temptation before us.
By way of conclusion, I share with you an insight I discovered some years ago in a commentary by Sr Mary McGlone on a phrase in today’s reading from Genesis. I had wondered why Adam and Eve felt shame when they realised they were naked. According to Sr Mary, what had struck them was not their naked bodies but their naked ambition to be something other than they were meant to be. That’s why they were in a rush to cover up. Are we ever prey to unreasonable, personal ambition?