[AI translation] Here again, I would like to draw attention first of all to the fact that this request of the Lord's Prayer is also connected to the previous one with an underlined "and": forgive us our trespasses... forgive us our trespasses and lead us not into temptation. It is the man who has been forgiven of his sins who truly knows what the danger of temptation is. For forgiveness of sins does not give me the freedom to continue in the same place and in the same way as before, but through forgiveness of sins God lifts me up from the depths, welcomes me back into fellowship with Him, helps me back onto the path of following Christ, and it is precisely through forgiveness of sins that He warns me not to stray from that path any longer! To ask for continually repeated forgiveness for continually repeated sins is uncharacteristic and an abuse of grace! With forgiveness of sins, God does not cleanse our lives so that we have something to smear again, any more than a child who has been chiseled loves to smear mud on a whitewashed wall. Forgiveness of sins means not only what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, "I do not condemn you," that is, I absolve you, but also what he said to her immediately afterwards, "Go and sin no more."Yes, but it is not so easy! For even if a man decides to sin no more, he always finds himself failing again, his good intentions drowning in shame, in defeat, in failure. So no help, no victory, no rise, no progress?! But there is! That is the aim of this next part of our daily prayer. That is why Jesus adds to the request for forgiveness of sins, as a continuation of it, "And lead us not into temptation", that is, lead us not into temptation!
Jesus does not conceal the dangers which beset those who would follow him. There are many forms of temptation, many faces of temptation on this journey. Behind these many temptations is one evil power: the Tempter! I do not want to go into the person of Satan, the reality of demonic powers, perhaps there will be another time, but for now I will just say that Jesus Himself speaks of him as a personal power, as His enemy. He expressed His threat to us, among other things, in this image: the devil, like a roaring lion, prowls about seeking whom he may devour. And one of his greatest triumphs is precisely that he has succeeded in making modern people believe that he does not exist, that he is just a kind of medieval meeple with a horse's tail and a long tail. The reality is, however, that there is a mysterious centre of power from which the very man who wants to follow Christ is under constant attack. Satan is not a ghost, but a temptress: a mysterious power that is always following us and, as the Hungarian word so eloquently puts it, haunts us, tracks us. Not only in the vanities of the world, but even here in the church, even in the inner silence of the prayer room. It haunts me like a shadow in the light and is as difficult to catch as the shadow on the wall. It never comes so that we recognize it. He did not offer his first victims, Adam and Eve, 'Go ahead, now rebel against God' - but held out to them a desirable, beautiful opportunity: 'You will be like God'. And what could have been more glorious for the man in paradise than to become like God? And the victim took an unsuspecting bite...
The danger of temptation is precisely that it hides behind its beautiful, deceptive colours the one who is behind it: the Tempter. It is not so blatantly revealing the temptation, "Go and steal, no one will notice, someone else is doing it!" Oh no, that would make his diabolical origins easy to spot. But he begins, "See how unjust it is that others have and you have not; do justice to yourself!" And the victim does not even notice the fine web of threads in which he is entangled until it is too late. He doesn't say: 'Go on, be unfaithful to your spouse, fidelity is boring' - so the victim would shy away from it, because he would immediately see the devil behind it, but by starting to feel sorry for yourself, by telling you how alone you are, by telling you that your spouse doesn't really understand you, even though you need tenderness, you have the right to be happy, and by making you imagine that the other one is the one! And once you've done that, it's easy to take you to the slaughter.
The Tempter never presents temptation to mortal man unpackaged or labelled "made in hell", but in some elegant form, under a bona fide name: for example, under the banner of self-confidence he sells pride, under the label of justice he sells indifference, under the label of love he sells spineless indulgence, under the banner of thrift he sells greed, under the label of prudence he sells cowardice, under the label of courage he sells temptation. The Tempter is a terrifyingly cunning power! You cannot defend yourself against it in the same way as Odysseus, the Greek epic hero, tried to sail past the island of the Sirens, by stuffing the sailors' ears with wax and tying himself to the ship's mast so that they would not be caught by the seductive song and could sail on. It is in vain that you plug your ears, in vain that you shut yourself up in a monastery: it speaks to you from the depths of your heart, hiding behind your feelings, your desires, your instincts, and in the very silence, the isolation, the solitude, you hear its voice as your innermost self. The apostle James says it directly: "Every man is tempted when he is drawn and enticed by his own lust." (James 1:14) But it is not only from within, but also from without that comes to us, surprising us in the circumstances of our lives. Behind every situation and occasion of our lives, there is the Tempter. There are difficult situations, critical situations, such as material misery, serious illness, family turmoil, human ill-will, misfortune - and immediately the temptation appears: which consists in my being dulled, in questioning God's goodness and mercy. It's as if someone mockingly asks: is this what forgiveness means, is this what prayer is worth? But vice versa: one can be wealthy, healthy, blessed with a high-powered career, happy, and it is precisely this that the tempter uses against him, it is precisely the abundance of good days that makes him arrogant, self-righteous, insincere, conceited. It is precisely through prosperity that the tempter makes it easy for a man to believe that he deserves his good fortune.
And the very air we breathe, the atmosphere we live in, can be full of temptation, yet we can remain pure, full of peace. Sometimes the air is filled with hate, its pressure can weigh on whole parts of the world. Sometimes the air of moral laxity, of sexual impurity, can suffocate and suffocate, infecting whole societies. One absorbs these temptations almost imperceptibly with the air, constantly exposed to the danger of slow infiltration by the mere fact of being alive! Thus the Tempter tempts you within and without, around and within, always, in a thousand ways, in a million variations, but always to the same end. For the end is to draw us out of communion with God, to draw us out of the way of obedience, to draw us out of that state of reconciliation with God which forgiveness of sins has just made possible for us. It is also part of the nature of the Tempter that he preys on believers. He has a great desire for those who have departed from him to Christ: he does not tempt those who are his anyway, he rules over them. By his tempting practices he surrounds those whom he would reconquer. Nor does the cat run after the dead frog, its passion for the hunt is aroused by the live prey.
And the old man is right who once, hearing an arrogant young man say, "I am not afraid of Satan," said: "The question is not whether you are afraid of Satan or not, but whether Satan is afraid of you?" Well: he is not afraid of you - but there is someone he is afraid of! The Bible says: he is afraid! The one from whom he flees in terror, the one against whom he is helpless. The one the Bible says came to undo the devil's work: Jesus Christ! He too was tempted by Satan's subtle temptations, but he could not be dissuaded, he could not be made to rebel, all his attempts broke him, and finally his sting was broken. The cross and the open tomb are the sign of the decisive, great victory that has been accomplished. The victory of Christ our Lord over the temptations and the Tempter is more than the triumph of a dramatic hero: it is a redemptive victory, which means that he has not only won a victory for himself, but has laid the foundation of a victory on which a victorious human life can be built. It is possible, then, to triumph over temptations, because Someone has already triumphed, and in that triumph of His, He includes me, you, all of us who believe in Him.
The very fact that I can pray in the midst of temptations, that I can call on Him whom the tempter fears, is in itself a great strength. Someone once advised me that as soon as the Tempter appears, try to think immediately of Jesus crucified. It is difficult to think of something evil and of Him at the same time. It's impossible to think! When a believer asks, "Lead us not into temptation," he is praying that God's Holy Spirit will make Christ's redemptive victory effective in him. I ask that God would confirm me in the sure knowledge that the Tempter has been defeated by the death of Christ. So do not put me in a position to forget this, to doubt it. Make the saving fact of the death of Jesus tangible in me, and let this be manifested in my standing with God in my struggle against temptation, in my courageous warfare by His power, and in my sharing in His victory! Then the temptation which the Tempter intended to destroy will be for my good; the temptation which he tried to make me separate from God will drive me more closely into God's protecting arms, and so will bring me to salvation instead of damnation!
This petition, "Lead us not into temptation", is the climax of prayer. I ask God to lead me to that supreme state where temptation has lost its power, has become ineffective, does not need to be consciously fought against, because the character in Christ automatically rejects it - where victory becomes natural! This part of our daily prayer is also said in the plural, in place of others, like the others. And this today, today of all days, when in our capital the greatest cause of humanity is the subject of a congress of immense proportions, let this be for us a fervent supplication that God may indeed not let the world be tempted by the demons of war and violence, that He may purge the atmosphere of hatred!
Let us pray in the words of the hymn, in the certain faith that there is victory over temptations:
"AND LEAD ME NOT INTO TEMPTATION,
that might have power over us;
...DELIVER US FROM THAT EVIL,
Who vomits evil on us everywhere."
(Cant. 483, verse 14)
Amen
Date: 27 February 1955.
Lesson
Mt 4,1-11