Today's Sunday reading: the temptation of Christ in the desert. There's something there that I never saw until today. Do we REALLY think that after 40 days of fasting in the desert, after which all desire for food has been sublimated, the spirit transported to ecstasy upon ecstasy, after vision upon vision, and after the Jesu's obvious Essene training, that these palty temptations: mere food (which he knew he could obtain by merely walking out of the desert), kingdoms (which he ALREADY owned and knew he would rule forever), and notariety,( which he knew he would soon have anyway), were actually difficult for him to resist? I don't think so. There is a mystery here. This lesson is not about Jesus. For I do not believe for one minute that the presence of a/the Satan was terrifying or overawing to Him. No. This was some rite of passage. Some thrice denial of things that were already rags, already less than nothing, to him. For a contemplative of his magnitude, especially heightened by his fasting, would never conceivably succumb to such trivial, banal and obvious temptations. Why then is this story here? I don't know. But it must either be a story for the newly initiated--a 'child's' story of the spiritual life--or it is something altogether sublime and hidden, or both.
