the Temptation on the Mountain
Spiritual Lessons from
the Temptation on the Mountain
Our subject tonight is some reflections inspired by the temptation on the mountain.
In truth, whenever I contemplate this topic, I marvel greatly at God’s patience and His wondrous long-suffering in His dealings with Satan.
God’s Long-Suffering in His Dealings with Satan:
Satan dared to compete with God, saying, “I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14), and he wished to cause the first man to fall into the same sin, saying to Adam and Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3)… Then he continued attempting to destroy the Kingdom of God in mankind, drawing thousands and millions of people into disobedience to God.
All this, and God is patient; He does not annihilate Satan nor bring him to an end.
Satan has led countless numbers of people astray into atheism, into idol worship, into corruption, and into every kind of deviation and blasphemy, and still God prolongs His patience toward him… The day has not yet come in which He will cast him into the lake burning with fire and brimstone…
In all this, God teaches us to be patient with our enemies and those who resist us, and to be long-suffering toward their schemes and their wars against us…
It is astonishing that after all this, Satan dares to intrude among the children of God, in the story of Job, and stands without shame or embarrassment to address God, whose Kingdom he has long fought…
And more astonishing than this is that God spoke with Satan, without cursing him, or even rebuking him, and without wounding his feelings with a harsh word; on the contrary, He granted him another opportunity to practice his hobby of fighting the Kingdom!!
God’s permission for Satan to speak with Him in the story of Job was far lighter than His permission for him to tempt Him on the mountain, and even to choose the appropriate place for the temptation. So much so that, as a result of this permission, Satan dared to ask the Lord to bow down to him!!!
Here the Lord rebuked him, and he departed. He could have rebuked him and driven him away from the very beginning of the whole temptation… And just as the Lord prolonged His patience toward Satan, He still prolongs His patience toward his helpers and soldiers in every age…
All this in order to teach us how to deal with our enemies… that we do not repay evil with evil, nor harshness with harshness, nor enmity with enmity…
God has not yet destroyed Satan; he still works… and he will continue to work until his hour comes, which has not yet come…
The Principle of Temptation and Testing:
The second lesson we learn is the temptation itself, and its necessity…
God tested our father Abraham with several trials: He tested him when He asked him to offer his son, his only one, as a burnt offering… And although He knew Abraham’s heart, yet He tested him…
And likewise He did with righteous Job.
He tests man so that he may be justified, so that he may rely on God, so that he may be an example to others, so that his heart may be broken and humbled by the trial, so that he may be trained in prayer, and trained in endurance…
All this with regard to man… But the temptation of the Son of God had other reasons, perhaps foremost among them that Satan wished to know who this One was, of whom the Holy Spirit bore witness at the Baptism… Is He truly the Son of God?… And if so, why does He not use His authority as a Son? And what is the need of hunger, solitude, and fasting…!
If Christ Himself was tempted, let us accept temptations without murmuring, and let us listen to the saying of Saint Barsanuphius:
If we are sinners, through temptations we are disciplined. And if we are righteous, through temptations we are purified. In any case, temptations are beneficial for us.
The Mountain in the Life of the Lord Christ:
The Lord Christ loved the mountains, and the mountains held importance in His life: just as the temptation was on a mountain, so also was the Sermon on a mountain; and His meditations and prayers were on the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane. His glory was on the Mount of Transfiguration, and His crucifixion was on Mount Golgotha…
By their nature, mountains possess spiritual delight, for the hand of man has not intervened in them to corrupt them… Whoever among you has experienced the wilderness, the desert, the quietness, the stillness, and the calm nature far from the hand of men, knows the effect of the mountains…
Mar Isaac said: “A mere sight of the desert kills from the heart worldly movements.” “They are the mountains far from the prison of the senses…”
How beautiful is the saying of Scripture about the Lord: “His foundations are in the holy mountains.” The saints lived in the mountains, in the desolate mountains, where there are no scenes to entice the senses, in a place without water, and an untraveled land.”
There, since their senses were not occupied by what entices them, their minds were occupied with the divine work, and their hearts were inflamed with the love of God, without hindrances.
Adam began his life in Paradise. And in Paradise there were sights that entice the senses, so he was fought by food and by the desire of fruits. He saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, and desirable to look at… and he began to love the world and matter.
But Christ did not begin His ministry in Paradise as Adam did; rather, He began it in the wilderness, in asceticism from material things, far from fruits and flowers…
Would that the mountains be for you a place of meditation, a place of prayer and experience. And would that you spend your vacations there instead of in places of stumbling and lusts.
The Lord Christ began His ministry with solitude, quietness, and silence.
He left all people and sat alone on the mountain. He left His Virgin Mother, and the sons of His aunt—James, Judah, and Joses—He left them all…
It was great love from the Virgin that she did not hinder the solitude of her Son…
He was her only Son, and she loved Him. Yet she left Him alone. She did not stand as an obstacle before His spiritual work. His words while He was a boy rang in her ears: “I must be about My Father’s business.”
How noble is the mother who does not stand in the way of her son’s spiritual path, even if she sacrifices her emotions, distancing her motherhood from selfishness and blending it with wisdom.
The Virgin consented that her Son be alone on the mountain, with the wild beasts, after the glorious declaration that accompanied His Baptism. She accepted that He leave the house and go about from village to village and from city to city, having nowhere to lay His head. She accepted that His favorite place be the Mount of Olives… The Christ who chose the mountain, silence, and quietness, also chose for Himself a silent and quiet Mother.
The Word of God, the Wisdom of God, and the Utterance of God, sat silent…!
But it was a contemplative silence, and a planning silence… The silence of the Son is the Son’s conversation with the Father… His mouth is silent, and His heart speaks; His tongue is silent, and His feelings are occupied with divine things…
Thus Christ lived 30 years, of which we heard no news.
For the inner work was not recorded for us in the Gospels; rather, events and sayings were recorded. Perhaps John the Baptist was in the same condition, who spent 30 years in the wilderness before beginning his ministry…
Christ willed also to be born of a silent maiden…
She saw much and contemplated much, without speaking… “She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.”
This wondrous silence was a manifestation of inner depth…
It was a field for prayer, for contemplation, for inner work, and for quiet planning… Silence is a manifestation of balance, wisdom, deliberation, and calmness… This period of quiet was a period of preparation for ministry, a period of planning before action…
In your silence there is a mystery that none will see… Its Holy of Holies except the silent.
So was Christ, and His Mother, and the angel who prepared His way.
The deep person sees that “listening is better than speaking.” In his silence he thinks, and in his silence he prays, and in his silence he enters into the depths of matters. In his silence he sits with God, and sits with himself. In his silence he keeps away from the errors of the tongue.
Christ did not keep silent to avoid the errors of the tongue, for in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge… but He kept silent as depth, as union with the Father…
We do not know the depths of those forty days during which Christ sat silent… Each day of them was a Holy of Holies, indeed each hour, indeed each moment. Who can enter into the depth of this sacred silence, and what it contained of feelings and emotions and thoughts, and what it contained of love and wisdom… and of mysteries.
In those forty days the Lord Christ laid down the foundations of the ministry upon which He would proceed… They were in His heart, and He established them as firm principles that every spiritual servant may follow.
The Lord Christ gives us an idea of the importance of retreat before ministry. The importance of the forty days that the priest spends in the monastery before his service, and the importance of the hour of prayer that every servant spends in his chamber before speaking to people or visiting them…
The Life of Victory:
The period of the forty days which Christ spent on the mountain was not only a period of quietness, contemplation, and prayer, but it was also an example of the life of victory that He passed through in His wars with Satan…
He gave us an example of how to answer the demons and overcome them. He proved to us practically how Satan is weak in his temptations and wars, weak in his reasoning and argument, weak in his discussions and in his enticements, weak before the phrase: “Go away, Satan.” Satan fights, but he has no power over the spiritual.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Kiraza Magazine – Seventh Year (Issue Eleven) – 12-3-1976
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