After returning from his brief vacation in the Italian Alps, the Holy Father held his General Audience for the week of 15 July on Saturday (21 July). This was the catechesis he gave:

1. Another element belongs to the "beginning" of the messianic mission of Jesus, a very interesting and evocative one for us; the evangelists relate it and make it depend on the action of the Holy Spirit: that element is the desert experience. We read in Mark's Gospel: "At once (after the Baptism) the Spirit drove Him out into the desert" (Mk 1:12). In addition Matthew (4:1) and Luke (4:1) say that Jesus "was led by the Spirit into the desert". These texts offer us various indications, which lead us to further study of the mystery of the intimate union of Jesus-Messiah with the Holy Spirit, from the beginning of the work of redemption.

First of all, we should make an observation about linguistics: the verbs which the evangelists used ("was led" in Matthew and Luke, "drove" in Mark) express an especially dynamic initiative on the Holy Spirit's part. That initiative is incorporated fully into the logic of Jesus' spiritual life and His psychology: from John He received a "Baptism of repentance", and therefore He feels the need for a period of reflection and of austerity (even though He personally had no need for penance since He was "full of grace" and "holy" from the moment of His conception, cf. Lk 1:35; Jn 1:14), in preparation for His messianic mission.

His mission also demands that He live in the midst of sinful people whom He is sent to evangelize and save (cf. St Thomas, Summa Theol., III, q.40, a.1), in a struggle with demonic powers. Out of this the occasion arises for this pause in the desert "to be tempted by the devil". Therefore Jesus complies with the inner impulse and goes where the Spirit wills.

2. The desert, besides being a place to meet God, is also a place of temptation and spiritual struggle. During their 40-year-long desert pilgrimage the people of Israel had experienced many temptations and also yielded to them (cf. Ex 32:1-6; Nm 14:1-4; 21:4-5; 25:1-3; Ps 78:17; I Cor 10:7-10). Jesus goes into the desert almost as a way of linking Himself up with His people's historical experience. But, unlike the behavior of Israel, at the moment of the beginning of His messianic activity, He is above all docile to the action of the Holy Spirit, who demands of Him a definitive interior preparation for the carrying out of His mission. It is a period of solitude and spiritual testing in which He overcomes with the help of God's Word and by prayer.

In the spirit of Biblical tradition and in line with Israelite psychology, the number 40 could easily be connected with other ancient events. It is full of meaning for salvation history: the 40 days of the flood (cf. Gn 7:4, 17), the 40 days that Moses stayed on the mountain (cf. Ex 24:18), and the 40 days of Elijah's journey during which he was refreshed by the miraculous bread which gave him new strength (cf. I Kgs 19:8). According to the evangelists, Jesus, by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, adapts both to this stay in the desert and to the tradition and the almost sacred number (cf. Mt 4:1; Lk 4:1). He will do the same thing during the period in which He appears to the apostles after the Resurrection and Ascension into heaven (cf. Acts 1:3).

3. Jesus, therefore, was led into the desert so that He could face the temptations of Satan and be able to have a freer and more intimate contact with the Father. Here, we must also keep in mind that in the Gospels the desert is presented many times as the place where Satan dwells: one need only recall the passage in Luke on the "unclean spirit" which, "when it goes out of someone, roams through arid regions searching for rest..." (Lk 11:24); and the other passage about the Gerasene demoniac who was "driven by the demon into deserted places" (Lk 8:29).

In the case of the temptations of Jesus, the impulse to go into the desert comes from the Holy Spirit and signifies above all the beginning of a manifestation—one can even say of a new awareness—of the struggle which He will have to wage to the bitter end against Satan, sin's craftsman. Overcoming his temptations, He thus showed His saving power over sin and the advent of God's Kingdom, as He would one day say: "If I drive out demons by the power of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you" (Mt 12:28).

The Spirit is revealed both in Christ's power over evil and Satan, and in this "coming of God's Kingdom" through Christ's actions.

4. It is well to observe that in the temptations which Jesus underwent and overcame during the "desert experience", one notes Satan's opposition to the coming of God's Kingdom into the human world, an opposition directly or indirectly expressed in the texts of the evangelists. The answers which Jesus gives to the tempter unmask the fundamental intentions of the "father of lies" (Jn 8:44) who tries in perverse fashion to use the words of Scripture to reach his goals. But Jesus refutes him on the basis of the same Word of God, properly applied.

The evangelists' narrative perhaps in some way echoes and establishes a parallel between the analogous temptations of the people of Israel in their 40-year pilgrimage in the desert (the search for nourishment: cf. Dt 8:3; Ex 16; the pretext of divine protection for self-satisfaction: cf. Dt 6:13; Ex 32:1-6) and with various moments in Moses' life. But the episode forms part of the history of Jesus, specifically, one could say, in its biographical and theological logic. Though exempt from sin, Jesus was able to experience the external seductions of evil (cf. Mt 16:23): and it was well that He was tempted in order to become the New Adam, our head, our merciful redeemer (cf. Mt 26:36-46; Hb 2:10, 17-18; 4:15; 5:2, 7-9).

At the root of all the temptations was the vision of a glorious political messiahship, which was widespread and had penetrated the soul of the people of Israel. The devil seeks to lead Jesus to accept this false perspective, because the devil is the adversary of God's plan, of God's law, of God's economy of salvation, and is therefore the enemy of Christ, as is seen in the Gospel and other New Testament writings (cf. Mt 13:39; Jn 8:44; 13:2; Acts 10:38; Eph 6:11; I Jn 3:8 etc.). If Christ too were to fall, the empire of Satan who boasts that he is the ruler of the world (cf. Lk 4:5-6) would have the final victory in history. That moment of struggle in the desert, therefore, was decisive.

5. Jesus knows that He was sent by the Father to establish God's Kingdom in the world of humankind. On the one hand, for this purpose He accepts being tempted in order to take His proper place among sinners, as He had already done at the Jordan, in order to serve as a model for all (cf. St Augustine, De Trinitate, 4:13). But, on the other hand, by virtue of the Holy Spirit's "anointing", He reaches into the very roots of sin and defeats the one who is the "father of lies" (Jn 8:44). Thus He willingly goes to face the temptations at the start of His ministry, complying with the Holy Spirit's impulse (cf. St Augustine, De Trinitate, 13:13).

One day when His mission is completed He will proclaim: "Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out" (Jn 12:31). And on the eve of His passion He will repeat once again: "the ruler of the world is coming; but he has no power over me" (Jn 14:30); rather, " the ruler of this world has been condemned" (Jn 16:33). The struggle against the "father of lies" who is the "ruler of this world ", begun in the desert, will reach its climax on Golgotha: the victory will come about through the cross of the Redeemer.

6. Therefore we are called to the full value of the desert as a place for a special experience of God, as it was for Moses (cf. Ex 24:18), and for Elijah (cf. I Kgs 19:8), and as it is above all for Jesus who, "led" by the Holy Spirit, is willing to go through the same experience: one of contact with God the Father (cf. Hos 2:16) in contrast to the powers which oppose God. His experience is exemplary, and can serve as a lesson for us on the need for penance—not for Jesus who was without sin, but for all of us. Jesus Himself one day will admonish His disciples about the need for prayer and fasting in order to cast out "unclean spirits" (cf. Mk 9:29 Vulg.); and amidst the tension of His so1itary prayer in Gethsemani, He counsels the apostles who were there: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Mk 14 38). By conforming ourselves to the victorious Christ of the desert, we will discover that we too have a divine Comforter: the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, since Jesus Christ promised that He would "take from what is mine" and give it to you (cf. Jn 16:14): He will take some of Christ's victory over sin and Satan, sin's first craftsman, to associate with it anyone who is tempted—He who led the Messiah into the desert not only "to be tempted", but also so that He might give the initial proof of His victorious power over the devil and his reign.