Explore "Testing and Temptation" by Jorge Mario Bergoglio on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
OUR FAITHFULNESS to the call of Christ will be tested. Sometimes the temptation will come to us as a hardly audible whisper, and at other times it will challenge us face to face, but the words will always be the same: "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel, let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him" (Matt 27: 42-43). The blinding force of this temptation is all the stronger when our sinful heart clings to other paths of salvation or other ways of life different from the ones the Lord desires. At times the Lord wants us crucified alongside himself: "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us! " (Luke 23: 39)-and we will not always have some companion at hand to tell us the truth: "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong" (Luke 23: 40-41).
The devil is intelligent. He knows how and where to tempt people. Saint Ignatius describes him as "a military commander who is attempting to conquer and plunder his objective. The captain and leader of an army on a campaign sets up his camp, studies the strength and structure of a fortress, and then attacks at its weakest point. In the same way, the enemy of human nature prowls around and from every side probes all our theological, cardinal, and moral virtues. Then at the point where he finds us weakest and most in need in regard to our eternal salvation, there he attacks and tries to take us" (SpEx 327). The evil spirit mounts his assault by use of bravado ("making himself like a woman: weak when faced by firmness but strong in the face of acquiescence" [SpEx 325]).5 He even tries to charm us, but for that he needs an ambience of secrecy. 6 However he attacks, he is always astute in his planning. He know what he wants. And if he attacks something, it is because he recognizes that it is dangerous. That is why Christian tradition asserts that where there is temptation there is also grace. Temptation is a "difficult time," Cardinal Pironio tells us, and as such "it belongs to the designs of the Father, being essentially a time of grace and salvation. "7