“And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
And he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. The temptation's terms are explicit: bypass the cross, receive the nations, simply bow down to the one who is offering them. The devil does not ask Jesus to deny God — only to expand his loyalties to include one more object of worship. This is the temptation of idolatry in its starkest form: exchange the path of obedience and suffering for the path of power and glory at the cost of a compromised allegiance. The kingdoms the devil offers are real kingdoms; the shortcut he proposes is a real shortcut to visible power. Jesus refuses it because the path of the cross is not merely a means to the same end — the manner of the kingdom's coming is as important as the kingdom's arrival.
Church Fathers on Matthew 4:9
The Devil, left in uncertainty by this second reply, passes to a third temptation. Christ had broken the nets of appetite, had passed over those of ambition, he now spreads for Him those of covetousness; 'He taketh him up into a very high mountain,' such as in going round about the earth he had noticed rising above the rest. The higher the mountain, the wider the view from it.
We are not to suppose that when he shewed him the kingdoms of the world, he presented before Him the kingdom of Persia, for instance, or India; but he shewed his own kingdom, how he reigns in the world, that is, how some are governed by fornication, some by avarice.
By 'their glory,' is meant, their gold and silver, precious stones and temporal goods.
Read all 25 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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