As difficult as this may be for us to hear, there must have been some inkling of a question on Jesus's part for if not, this would not have been a temptation. It arises in the questions about whether we are really doing what God would call us to do. We want clarity, certainty, and proof, and we are left with silence. In the season of Lent, we enter the wilderness places and are confronted by these temptations. Carlo Carretto described this journey as the search for God in the silent places of life.
Silence is the suspension bridge thrown by the soul.
Thomas Merton describes it this way in his book, Confessions of a Guilty Bystander . He tells of a moment of awakening in his life when he left the monastery to run an errand in nearby Louisville. It is the function of solitude to make one realize such things. In the midst of our solitude, we find that suspension bridge that leads us beyond the temptation, beyond the tests and trials, that leads us to that Easter message of love and grace and new beginnings. What follows the temptation stories in Luke's gospel is Jesus entering the Temple and taking the scroll and reading from it God's promise to bring good news to the poor, release for the prisoner, sight for the blind.