On the First Sunday of Lent we reflect on Christ’s Temptations in the desert. Jesus was tempted by Satan and conquered over him. As St. Augustine wrote: in Christ we were tempted because he had our flesh and from him came our salvation.

To grasp a little better the significance of Christ’s Temptations we should meditate on Blessed Newman’s explanation of Christ’s Humanity. In one of his Parochial and Plain Sermons he writes of the Three Divine Persons:

“They differ in this besides, that the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son. While They are one in substance, Each has distinct characteristics which the Other has not. Surely those sacred Names have a meaning in them, and must not lightly be passed over. And they will be found, if we reverently study them, to supply a very merciful use towards our understanding Scripture; for we shall see a fitness, I say, now that that sacred truth is revealed, in the Son of God taking flesh, and we shall thereby understand better what He says of Himself in the Gospels. The Son of God became the Son a second time, though not a second Son, by becoming man. He was a Son both before His incarnation, and, by a second mystery, after it. From eternity He had been the Only-begotten in the bosom of the Father; and when He came on earth, this essential relation to the Father remained {59} unaltered; still, He was a Son, when in the form of a servant,—still performing the will of the Father, as His Father’s Word and Wisdom, manifesting His Father’s glory and accomplishing His Father’s purposes.”

Through his Incarnation the Son triumphs over Satan and sin. When we are tempted we can be victorious with Christ. We are not alone; with Christ we can overcome Satan and evil.