Luke 4:2 — Community Reflections

LUKE 4:2 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.”

Where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry — the forty days of testing echo Israel's forty years, Moses's forty days, and Elijah's forty-day journey. He ate nothing during those days communicates genuine physical privation — the testing occurs in the context of real hunger, real physical weakness. At the end of them he was hungry: the understatement is characteristic of Luke — forty days without food produces genuine, extreme hunger.

Church Fathers on Luke 4:2

Christ is tempted after His baptism, showing us that after we are baptized, temptations await us. Hence it is said, But Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit it, &c.
Theophylact · 11th century

God said in times past, My Spirit shall not always abide in men, for that they are flesh. But now that we have been enriched with the gift of regeneration by water and the Spirit, we are become partakers of the Divine nature by participation of the Holy Spirit. But the first-born among many brethren first received the Spirit, who Himself also is the giver of the Spirit, that we through Him might also receive the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Cyril of Alexandria · 5th century

When therefore you read that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit, and it is written in the Acts concerning the Apostles, that they were filled with the Holy Spirit, you must not suppose that the Apostles were equal to the Savior. For as if you should say, These vessels are full of wine or oil, you would not thereby affirm them to be equally full, so Jesus and Paul were full of the Holy Spirit, but Paul’s vessel was far less than that of Jesus, and yet each was filled according…
Origen · 3rd century

Read all 28 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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