Breaking from the Devil’s thraldom
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Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist everything except temptation”, and this seems to be a truism. However, the Collect of Ash Wednesday spoke of our “Christian warfare” re-initiated in Lent, so we cannot simply surrender to every temptation but must “battle against the spirit of evil”. How are we to do this if, as Wilde says, we evidently cannot resist temptation? He is right in so far as he means that we cannot by our own power resist temptation. We need better weaponry and a champion against the foe.
The Scriptures tell us that our “adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” and we should “resist him, firm in [our] faith” (1 Peter 5:8-9). In fighting the foe, we should have faith in our champion, Jesus Christ who, as we hear in today’s Gospel, resisted the devil’s wiles through his steadfast focus on God, placing his faith firmly in the Lord and his promises, rather than in the world and its ephemera.
Pope Benedict XVI has noted in his encyclical Spe salvi, that our society has often come to place its hope of redemption in scientific progress, in politics, in technology, and yet, although all these may be good things – for those things which tempt us often are – they can never offer us salvation nor final hope. Rather than to hope in our own strength or worldly progress, we should emulate St Paul who says: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Lent re-calls us to also give ourselves – to God, and to our neighbour. Thus we arm ourselves with the “weapons of self-denial”, in order that we might re-prioritise our life, and so, re-focus on God who is our only hope. Christ, whose obedience and perfect love of God has overcome the sin of Adam, is our champion. Let us struggle valiantly this Lent, trusting entirely in God’s grace and strength, knowing that Jesus has won the victory for us, even if we should fail through our human frailty. As we journey with him, taking up our cross, may we become conformed to him so that Christ may live in us and give us a share in his final triumph. Then, as Blessed Jordan of Saxony once said, we “should laugh after breaking from the devil’s thraldom”.
Let us pray: “Watch over us, O eternal Saviour; do not permit the tempter’s wiles to ensnare us, for you have become our everlasting help” (from the Nunc dimittis antiphon at Dominican compline during Lent).
