Why are saints tempted?

No matter how low we have gone, how severely we have been tempted, Jesus is right there with us to forgive us and rehabilitate us.

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

The question is not whether saints experience temptation. They do and will because they are human. Jesus is human also and, as we heard in the Gospel of the First Sunday of Lent, he also experienced temptation but for different reasons.

As human beings, we are conceived into a world with a sinful history that goes back to the sin of our first parents. It affects relationships, our institutions and even the natural order of our world, clouding our minds and judgment, darkening the clarity with which we see things. It is hard for us to see the whole picture. A person who gets in our way, in a traffic lane or even a grocery lane, may seem like a pain or an obstacle for one minute, even though he or she might be buying food for or on their way to deliver a meal to a sick family. 

It is well documented that saints faced many temptations, not only before their conversions to a holier way of life, but also after. Many people who struggle with very powerful addictions — and in many ways we might see sin itself as an addiction — have discovered the great power of prayer and spiritual friendship, putting first things first, an order into their lives. We see this in the response of Jesus to the temptations Satan presented to him during his forty days and nights, fasting in the desert.

Jesus himself was tempted! Not because of his humanity, which was pure and unblemished by the effects of Original Sin, but because he desired to be so close to us sinners in order to show us how far God’s love goes to be near us and to rescue us from the power of temptation. Remember the context of these temptations. He had just submitted to baptism by John, the ritual submersion in the waters of the Jordan, which represented a desire to repent and to turn away from sin. He willingly immersed himself in the human condition, though sinless himself, so close did he want to be with us.

Emerging from the waters, he and some bystanders witness, in different ways, what is called a theophany, an extraordinarily visible and vocal manifestation from heaven that Jesus is indeed the beloved Son of God. Jesus is “filled with the Holy Spirit,” the evangelists tell us and led (even “driven” according to St. Mark) into the desert to be tempted (cf. Mt 4:1-11, Mk 1:9-13 and Lk 4:1-13). Why? 

Why was Jesus tempted? And indeed he was, and right to the core of who he was. Satan goes right for the proverbial jugular: “if you ARE REALLY the Son of God” (as it has just been confirmed you are), then …. Satan proposes all sorts of things that God seemingly should not have to put up with: hunger, powerlessness, humiliation, and a whole list of other things that we may be sure Jesus experienced in the desert such as the absence of companionship, the inability to communicate.

I often wondered what might have happened during those forty days. Was St. Joseph still living? What if he had died during that period? How would Mary have gotten through to him? Jesus was fasting. He must have noticed the little desert animals go back to their dens at night to be with their own and the birds hunkering down in their nests. “Desert” in the area Jesus lived in did not mean sand dunes and the absence of water, but a desolate place that no one wanted to live in. Even cities can have places like that!

So Satan is basically asking Jesus — the Son of God — why should you have to endure any of this IF you are really God, if you are so holy? The answer, of course, is that he does not have to, but Jesus uses the temptations also to put the devil in his place. At every temptation, Jesus turns the focus away from the temptation and toward God — exactly what the ancient serpent does not do. Remember that Lucifer’s prime sin was pride (“I will not serve”). He was a creature who refused to accept that he was not the Creator. This is at the core of all sin, a destruction of the order of creation, putting a created good ahead of God.

Now all human beings who are conceived with Original Sin have this tendency to see created things as desirable and ends in themselves. When we sin, we do it usually because it looks good or tastes good or feels good at the moment. Even if we know it is not, the temptation is in thinking that “this time” it might be okay but, as always, we learn that in doing so we are really violating our own conscience (moral knowledge) and, therefore, choosing our own “order” over God’s.

Jesus endures the onslaught of these temptations purely out of love. He wants to be so close to us that we may know that no matter how low we have gone, how severely we have been tempted — and may have struggled (successfully or not) with temptation — he is right there with us to forgive us and rehabilitate us. He did it with Peter, Paul and Augustine and all the other great saints, and he will do it for each and every one of us!

If the reason Jesus was tempted is in order to show us the depth of God’s love, perhaps the reason God permits us — and all the saints! — to be tempted is to show us also the breadth of God’s love. In other words, there is no limit to how far grace (God’s creative love) will go. Ultimately, Jesus goes to the cross where he experiences the very greatest temptations of all (again, “if you are the Son of God”), even feeling forsaken by the Father himself (“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me,” Mt 27:46).

The reality of temptation in our lives remains because we are fallen human beings, but the power of God’s grace is present to all who call up the Lord, as Jesus himself showed us by his own example. When tempted, he himself turned away from the source of temptation (and the Tempter) and turned his attention to God. This is our saving prayer: “In God We Trust.” Is it any wonder that, perhaps providentially, it should appear — in CAPITALS — on every twenty-dollar bill? Indeed, the official motto of the United States. As a remedy to sin and temptation, it’s one worth tattooing on our hearts. Like saints do.