1st Sunday of Lent – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; February 18, 2024

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.

To say that the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert means that he was driven, compelled by divine love. Such love is paradoxical, it is a compulsion which is at the same time free, just as true love is freely given. So Saint Paul will write, in the same letter, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor 3:17) and the love of Christ compels us (2 Cor 5:14). A man and a woman freely pledge their love in marriage, but afterwards the love they promised should compel them to the fulfillment of their vows.

It is for love of us, for us men and for our salvation, that Jesus did everything in his earthly life. It is for love of us that he went into the desert, fasted, prayed, did battle with Satan, and vanquished him.

But who and what is Satan?

The Book of Revelation speaks of the defeat of the dragon… that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world … the accuser of our brethren. (Rev 12:9,10) He is the ancient serpent, that is the serpent in the garden who tempted Eve and led our first parents into sin. “Devil” comes from the Greek “diabolos”, which means “divider” and “Satan” comes from the Hebrew “adversary”. The Devil seeks to divide men from God and among themselves. He sows hatred, conflict, and division. He is the adversary, the rebel against God, who seeks ever to destroy his work among men. As the adversary of God, he is the enemy of human salvation.

Jesus tells us that the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from what is proper to him because he is a liar and the father of lies. (Jn 8:44) He is a murderer because he brought death into the world by leading Adam and Eve into sin, and because through sin he kills souls. As the father of lies, he works first of all by means of deceit, pretending that he, rather than God, is our savior and liberator. When he fails to gain his objective by means of deceit, he will have recourse to violence and “bullying”.

That, however, only gets us to what Satan does. The same passage in the Book of Revelation speaks of war in heaven between Michael and his angels… and the dragon and his angels. (Rev 12:7) There we have it: Satan belongs to the angelic realm, but is a fallen angel, the leader among all the fallen angels, the Devil at the head of the whole host of devils.

The angels were all created by God in the beginning. They are spiritual beings, pure intellect and will, not part of the physical, bodily world, not having bodies as we do, but capable of acting powerfully upon the physical world. As spiritual beings, endowed with intellect and will, they are “persons,” neither human nor divine, but angelic. Their powerful minds do not acquire knowledge from experience of the physical world as we do, but rather were endowed by God from their very creation with the “blueprints”, we might call them, of the created world. From the perfection of their mind comes the fixity of their will; once they decide, there is no changing their mind or going back. That is why the devils are incapable of repentance and consequently incapable of receiving God’s mercy.

All the angels were created in the grace of God. How is it, then, that some turned against him? How is it that Lucifer, the bearer of light, became Satan, the adversary?

It is certain that all the angels, while created in grace, were put to some sort of mysterious test at the beginning of creation. Those who remained faithful were confirmed in grace and entered into the vision of God, the Most Holy Trinity. Those who rebelled were cast out forever. But what was this mysterious trial of the angels?

Again, the Book of Revelation gives us a hint when it shows the dragon in opposition to the great sign of the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head … who was with child. (Rev 12:1-2)

The trial of the angels at the beginning seems to have revolved around the supernatural order, the order of grace, concretized in Christ and Mary.

If we consider those “blueprints” of creation that the angels were given in the beginning, the angels would have first seen the order of creation and their place within that order, including their place within the angelic hierarchies. The angels were not created equal, but created in an hierarchical order. Further, those angelic hierarchies stand between God and the physical world, including man; they were created both to give praise to God for the wonders of his creation and to collaborate with him in the governance of the universe. They were to be, as it were, both the audience at the concert and the lead players following the conductor of the orchestra. Lucifer would have been, as it were, the first violin.

There is one thing, however, lacking in his image. The angels did not see the “conductor” of the orchestra. They knew God only through the “blueprints” as the “architect”, but they did not see him as he is. That also means that they did not know from the “blueprints” the mystery of God’s inner life, the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Then, however, God revealed to them the plan of how the world shown them in the “blueprints” was to unfold and the goal it was to achieve. The goal was that the angels were not merely to administer the world shown in the “blueprints” but were meant to share in God’s own trinitarian life and behold his face. There was, however, a condition and in that condition lay the trial of the angels.

St. Paul writes to the Hebrews, When he [God] brings the firstborn into the world, he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him.’ (He 1:6)

While we can think of these words as referring to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and the armies of angels singing “Glory to God”, we could also see in them an echo of the angelic trial at the beginning of creation.

God would have given the angels a sort of vision of what was to be, a man born of a woman, who would be the Son of God. He commanded, as a condition for entering into the fulness of life and beholding his face, that the angels were to worship his Son made man and honor his mother as their Queen. He did not yet reveal to them anything about human sin and Christ’s death on the Cross, simply the fact of the Son of God made man, born of a woman. In this way, also, he revealed to them the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Through this revelation, the angels also discover that their own position in the order of the universe has been changed. In the purely natural order, which they would have first perceived in their minds, they would have been the mediators between God and men; now they discover that their work of mediation must be subordinated to and integrated in a higher order, the order of the Incarnation, the order of the Son of God made man. Yet, that higher order is not only found above them, but in some way below them, as human nature is below them.

This was too much for Lucifer. He would not bow down. It was bad enough, in his mind, that he had to prostrate himself before the man Jesus, even were he the Son of God, but that he had to acknowledge Mary as his Queen was to him an unforgivable insult. He could not have what he wanted, but he could reject what God wanted. I will not serve was his cry of rebellion. (cf. Jer 2:20) His light went out and from Lucifer he became Satan. Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightening from the heaven. (Lk 10:18) In his train, Satan drew a third of the angelic host. (cf. Rev 12:4)

On the other side came the battle cry of St. Michael, the cry of faith from which his name comes: Who is like God! Following St. Michael, the faithful angels, consented to become ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation, (He 1:14) and entered into the vision of God. (cf. Mt 18:10)

Having been cast out of heaven, Satan and his “angels”, seek their revenge by waging an unrelenting warfare against mankind, targeting women especially on account of Mary. (cf. Rec 12:17) Yet, even after his first victory in the garden of Eden, God reminded him of his inevitable defeat: I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring; she shall bruise your head and you shall strike at her heel. (Gen 3:15)

Satan is exceedingly intelligent and exceedingly powerful, as are all the lesser devils. Yet, though unwilling, he is subject to God. The introduction to the book of Job shows that he was only able to put Job to the test, depriving him of this property, then of his health, with God’s permission. Further, while he knows there is a supernatural order, an order of grace, he is excluded from that order and, for all his intelligence, does not really understand it.

When, Jesus finally comes into the world, the truth is hidden from Satan. In the early 2^nd century St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote, “The virginity of Mary was hidden from the prince of this world, as was her offspring, and the death of the Lord; three mysteries of renown, which were wrought in silence by God.” (Letter to the Ephesians, 19)

When Satan approaches Jesus in the desert he suspects, because he knows he has no part in him, no hold upon him like he has on all other men who entered the world, the Virgin Mary excepted – he suspects, but he does not know. In his temptations he seeks to get Jesus to reveal his identity, asking if you are the Son of God, but Jesus vanquishes the temptations as man, without revealing his identity. (cf. Mt 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13) Satan drives Judas, the Pharisees, and the High Priests to deliver Jesus to death, but he only learns who Jesus really is after his death, through which he experiences his own defeat. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Cor 2:8)

What does all this mean for us?

Christ suffered for sins once, the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God.

Satan won the first victory, overthrowing Adam, and in Adam the whole human race. He suffered the final defeat when he was conquered by Christ on the Cross. The rest of history works out all the consequences until Christ’s return in judgment.

Through our birth from Adam, we entered this world under Satan’s dominion; we are rescued from that dominion through the new birth in faith and baptism, which bestows on us the forgiveness of sins, the life of grace, and a clear conscience before God. We have thus been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the beloved Son of God. (Col 1:13) We must not, then, put ourselves back into Satan’s power by committing sin.

Yet, though Christ has won the victory, we for our part, must share in the combat, following him, so as to share fully in his victory.

Lent is a time in which we renew our awareness of the spiritual warfare in which we are engaged throughout the year. Spiritual warfare: that is warfare on behalf of the spiritual order, the order of grace, and eternal life; a battle for an eternal kingdom not an earthly kingdom. The devil would have us believe that, even if God exists, the eternal kingdom does not exist, that the order of grace does not exist; the devil would have us seek no more than an earthly happiness, such as he deceitfully promises to bestow on us.

In this warfare we must remember that we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph 6:12) Thus, St. Paul exhorts us, Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand. (Eph 6:13)

We cannot hope to match the devil’s powerful intelligence – the one who tries, like Eve, to dialog with the devil, will fall – but like St. Michael in the beginning we can oppose him with the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. (Eph 6:16)

Jesus gave us the shield of faith and taught us how to use it; for all that, we are weak and at times can feel overwhelmed with the battle. Then we can exercise a sort of holy cowardice and, like little children, flee and take refuge beneath the mantle of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother.