With the memory of the coolness of the river still drenching his hair, the young man penetrates the ardent loneliness of that wretched place.1 In the distance he hears the howling of jackals driven mad by hunger and thirst, which wait for nightfall to descend into the valley to satiate their instincts. A bird of prey, perhaps a falcon, hovers menacingly, against the cloudless blue sky, gliding over its prey.
What does the wanderer seek where there is hardly anything? What have all those explorers, high-risk adventurers or enlightened mystics searched for in so many other deserts upon embarking on unthinkable journeys alone, testing their limits? Perhaps something more than the fascination of the unknown and its secrets of unexplored areas. Because like it or not, solitude is also the place of inevitable encounter with your own inner world, with its hidden regions, so full of surprises and dangers like the most remote corners of our planet. The desert is the unavoidable place of encounter with oneself.
Furthermore, whoever does not fear approaching the absolute, in any place, however remote, runs the risk of also encountering God, who is everywhere. For that reason, the desert, that environment where no one distracts the attention of the seeker nor can anything conceal the certainty of the unavoidable presence of the infinite, has always been the chosen place by those who feel the pressing need to withdraw themselves from the world to meditate or to pray.2
The newly baptized seeks a remote place to reflect on what has just happened to Him in the Jordan.3 A divine voice has spoken to Him, and He understands that God is calling Him to a unique task. But the voice from the sky has only said:
You are my beloved son; I feel proud of you.4
Jesus needs to hear more of His father’s voice to know what he expects of Him. The moment has arrived to discover what His mission will consist of and to decide how to undertake it.
He has left His home in Nazareth, and His family does not understand. From the time this idealist carpenter insisted on transferring the shop to His brothers and said goodbye to His family, His mother does nothing but cry. None of His relatives support Him. Some don’t cease to ridicule Him by treating Him as the enlightened one, a fanatic or a madman, and are now undoubtedly happy to lose sight of Him.5 No one, not even He, is a prophet in His own land.6
He needs an environment of serenity and calmness to reflect on His vocation and assume the risks that He shall face if He wishes to follow the voice from heaven. Here, in the silence of the desert of Judaea, He expects to find the peace and inspiration that will allow Him to hear in the depths of His heart God’s response to His numerous questions.
Nonetheless, this inhospitable wilderness is a fearful place, without water, without food, ephemeral hideout of bandits, the dwelling of hungry vermin and deadly snakes. Whoever gets lost in it knows that he must deal with any adversity and without any protection. Not in vain, the majority of human beings fear solitude and so avoid it at all cost. Moreover, a certain level of isolation becomes unbearable for whoever is afraid of his own inner emptiness, or for whoever has already sensed that undesirable presences peer out from the depths of his being.7 And even if this may not be his case, Jesus does not ignore the reality that, for many, such a desert is a sinister place, where demons are said to prowl . . .
But what real danger can there be in the desert for someone like Him? Does evil not abound more in cities? Since the most ancient times on earth, there are no remaining paradises shielded from danger, not even the most uninhabited. Because when we find ourselves completely alone, rarely are we in good company . . . There they are, lurking, whether we like it or not, our inevitable thoughts and the inescapable demands of our bodies.
The dreadfulness of the desert is that it forces us to assume what we truly are, without external help, and unable to feign or escape. There, we are really ourselves. The desert is, so far an obligatory place of passage for those who seek to find themselves, the par excellence environment of the test, because we must always make the most difficult decisions in the insulated stronghold of our inner solitude. The desert is, consequently, a dangerous battleground against invisible enemies.8
The contrast between this desolate wasteland and His previous experience cannot be greater. Upon the sublime moment Jesus feels embraced by the love of the Father in the coolness of the water in the middle of the river, He is stricken by the ardent solitude of this wilderness. Several hours of traveling have sufficed to make him go from communion with God through the open heavens to the painful sensation of desertion, and, what’s worse, to the absolute conviction of the presence of enemies lying in wait.
Jesus senses that He is not alone. He perceives the proximity of hungry beasts and evil spirits. He finds himself lost between the subhuman and the suprahuman, with no more company than his vulnerable humanity and the dark world of the shadows.
In this manner, forty days.9
Forty nights debating in doubt, unable to communicate with anyone, defenseless in a harsh and merciless land, and under a sky that seems infinitely distant . . .
When His desertion becomes more hurtful, when He fears fainting from starvation and anxiety, at the brink of delirium, He notices that someone approaches. The biblical passage calls this intruder by the generic name of peiradson, “the Tempter.” But Jesus does not yet know who it is. Soon, He will realize that His worst enemy is stalking Him.
But how can someone as spiritual as Jesus be tempted? Someone like Him who seeks communion with God should not run that risk . . .
Completely false.
In this world, the path of the believer necessarily passes, time and time again, through the desert of temptation. To be tempted is the price of being free, of being able to choose between various options and of running the risk of making a mistake. That freedom and that risk are the characteristics of human nature.10
To Jesus, assuming our condition represents having to confront, necessarily—as Adam and Eve, as the Israelites in the Exodus, as each one of us—decisions that often hide menacing risks. It is in our own being, at the core of our free will, where they attack with greater treachery and where we must face the forces of evil.
This young man, idealistic and generous like no other —when seeking divine answers to His human concerns has just responded to the call of God by completely surrendering to His will now that he is making concrete plans to dedicate his life to Him—finds himself abandoned in the agonizing desert of the test.
“Can it be,” He asks himself, “that God is telling me that I am mistaken?”
His doubt-stricken soul will end up learning through its own experience that “Never does one leave the ranks of evil for the service of God without encountering the assaults of Satan.” 11 Himself included or, rather, He more than anyone.12
The tempter, the treacherous peiradson, is very clever. He will not allow himself to be so easily recognized. He knows that, in order to convince someone, he has much greater assurances of success if he disguises temptation as necessity, if he turns it into an emergency or passes it off as something licit. Therefore, following his artful tactics, perfected after millennia of success, he begins by insinuating in the mind of the tempted a thought that is logical, a desire that seems legitimate . . . a voice that can recall that of an angel.
Every true temptation sooner or later gives rise to an inner, profound, subtle, struggle camouflaged as good excuses, disguised as laudable reasons, and nuanced by all extenuating factors and all possible justifications. That is how the tempter presents himself to Jesus, like the voice of a celestial messenger who comes to help Him.
Jesus has gone forty days without eating.
He is not fasting for the purpose of carrying out a purifying sacrifice or a meritorious exercise, and much less with the intention of undergoing a weakening diet to make everything “even more difficult,” as in a risky circus act. No. His fasting, learned in the Holy Scriptures,13 is the harsh collateral effect of the total availability that His intense inner struggle requires. He finds himself so immersed in