Behold the time when the soldier advances to the field, when the Christian hastens back to the fasts of God. Behold the time when the ease of the flesh, the sloth of the mind, the care of the belly, and all the torpor of domestic indulgence must be laid aside. Behold the time when, in the meditation of heavenly arms, the powers of soul and body must be exercised.
Behold the time when, with Christ presiding and the angels standing by, the fortitude of our struggle must be exercised. Now is the time when gluttony contends with fasting, abstinence with surfeit, chastity with luxury, faith with faithlessness, piety with impiety, patience with fury, greed with generosity, mercy with avarice, humility with pride, holiness with guilt — while Christ rewards. If, therefore, anyone, with God looking on, and while the heavenly trumpet already resounds,
while the angelic encounter presses on, being entangled in the allurements of the bedchamber, enervated by softness, wholly dissolved by conjugal caresses, neglects to come to the exercise of virtue, he loses the prize of the struggle, the glory of virtue, the palm of the contest, the crown of justice, and shall moreover be punished in time to come with the crime of a deserter. Today, brethren, Christ our King has addressed his fellow-soldiers from the tribunal of the Gospel; he has declared war upon the enemies, promised rewards to those who will fight, recounted the causes of the wars, and disclosed the wiles and attempts of the enemies;
he has marked out by a triumphal decree where and when and how we must fight. And although he alone can obtain the victory, yet for our sake and because of our fearfulness, he has commanded that all the reinforcements from on high be present. Whoever, then, has refused to hear these things, whoever has scorned to know such and so great decrees of our King — judge whether he has not himself stripped off the sacraments of our warfare, and given himself back from the heavenly fellowship, and made himself an exile.
But you, brethren, who wish to follow in this Lenten fast the pattern of the Lord's fast — you who are to fight, as we have said, against the troops of vices, against the battle-lines of crimes, against the shapeless shapes of concupiscences, against the whole airy, whole diffused, and countless legions of demons, and who are to triumph over them — prove this from those very temptations which follow upon the Lord's fast. For when the Lord had undertaken the fast of Lent with that untiring proof of his power, at once the devil ran up to fight by wiles, because he had no strength to withstand the one who fasted.
For as much as he lords it over those given to surfeit and over the drunken, so much does he fear one who prays, so much does he flee those who fast, the Lord saying: 'It is not cast out except by fasting and prayer' (Matthew 17:21). But by what fraud the devil dared to tempt, let us hear: 'If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' You have heard what the enemy himself thinks and judges about fasting: 'If you are the Son of God.' You see that he now believes him to be, not a man, but the Son of God, whom he had beheld to be free from the servitude of the belly. He felt it, the devil felt it, that fasting is to be preferred above all the virtues.
He had seen John exchange the delights of cities for a dwelling in the squalid wilderness, trample the softness of the flesh by the roughness of his garment, curb by rustic food all the world's luxury, and — what is the sole mark of deity — forgive men their sins. And yet he did not say to him, 'If you are the Son of God.' But when he saw the Lord fasting continually, he cried out: 'If you are the Son of God' (Matthew 4). The devil errs, who hurls against the Lord the wickednesses and arguments of his cunning. 'If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' What is this, that while Christ fasts, he seeks all the signs of deity solely in the promise of bread?
And him whom he perceives to be the Son of God by the continual sign of fasting, does he desire to prove to be the Son of God by the provision of bread, by care for the belly? 'If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' Why did he not say: 'If you are the Son of God, command that men, or angels, or something else be made,' but 'command that these stones be made bread'? He asks a sign of bread, who greatly dreads the sign of fasting. He asks a sign of bread, that he may flee from the fearful sign of fasting. The evil counselor thrusts bread forward, that he may change the virtue, that he may violate the resolve of the one fasting. But let us see what he answered about bread — he, the Bread who came down from heaven: 'Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.' How truly does the Word of God live by the word of God!
How truly does the Bread not need bread! How divinely does he convert stones into men, he who from the stones raises up sons of Abraham as a token of his majesty! And because the shameless enemy knows not how to be conquered once for all, unto the manifold triumph of the Conqueror, 'he set the Lord upon the pinnacle of the temple, and said: If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down' (Matthew 4:5-6). O what a sign! 'Cast yourself down': he would more fittingly have said, 'If you are the Son of God, ascend to heaven,' since it is indeed proper to man to fall to the depths, but proper to God to climb to the heights. 'If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down.' Thus he ever persuades his own, thus he ever 'provides' for his own; thus he lifts up his own, that he may hurl them from on high more violently into ruin. 'If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down.'
By his counsels the devil betrays himself. 'Cast yourself down.' He seeks a fall, he commands headlong plunges, and by such counsel, through Africa he makes martyrs, without outcry, by saying: 'If you wish to be a martyr, cast yourself down,' that he may drive them from on high to death, not lift them from lowliness and raise them to a crown. And just as the devil betrays himself by his counsels, so the Lord reveals himself by his answer, when he says: 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God' (Deuteronomy 6:16). By saying these things he plainly wished himself to be understood as Lord, himself as God — he who not only gave himself to the earth from the pinnacle of the temple, but hurled himself from the heavens down even to the depths below, so that he might be, not a pattern for those who fall, but the resurrection of the dead.
Take heed, brethren, whether the enemy could be more savage, since, though often conquered, he yields not to a man who hears and perceives the Lord God, and yet still does not cease to tempt. 'He set him upon a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said to him: All these will I give you, if falling down you will adore me.' He says these things, not as one who can give, but as one who can deceive; not to confer what he promises, but by his very promises to take away the things that are had. 'All these will I give you.' He offers to God the things that are God's; he promises back to the Author the things that are the Author's:
he urges to be adored, he who is to be adored by all; and, blinded by his own audacity, before the judgment he confesses to the Judge how he deceives the simple. To him the Lord replies, not so much by the testimony of the Law as by the authority of his own divinity: 'You shall adore the Lord your God' (Deuteronomy 6:13) — you shall adore that Lord God, to whom every knee bows, not only of things heavenly and earthly, but also of things beneath the earth (Philippians 2:10). You, therefore, gnashing and wailing in hell, shall adore him whom you now, a rash deserter, invite to adore you. And so the devil, so many times and in such a manner beaten back by the Lord, now runs about us his servants with all his fury; and just as Christ addresses his own soldiers, so he addresses his own and arms his ministers. The devil, therefore, says:
'The time of the fast now grievously overcomes us by its observance: through gluttony, through surfeit, through drunkenness, through luxury, we cannot assail men. Arm quarrels, sow discords, stir up hatreds, kindle wraths, breathe in lies, extort perjuries, suggest blasphemies, spread abroad idle talk, pour in deceits, forge avarice, provide base gains, so that what the belly now does not pay out to luxury, at least the moneybag may shut up and store away for punishment. Beware above all lest mercy, lest almsgiving, lest kindness blot out our past labors, carry off the present ones, and take away those to come.'
But we, brethren, both recognizing the admonitions of our King and hearing what the devil has commanded his own, let us carry out our fasts without quarrel, without outcry, without wrath, without deceit, without pretense, with all mercy, charity, and piety: so that the Lord Christ — who, having spurned the bloody victims of cattle, required the sacrifice of a contrite and afflicted spirit — may, appeased and made favorable, receive with the silence of peace the offerings of our fast.