Lenten Reflection – Day 40 of the Great Lent
The Fortieth Day – The Fast That Defeats Satan
40th Friday – The Doorstep of the Passion: St. Matthew 4:1-11
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.” (4:1–2)
Forty days.
The number is not accidental. It is not approximate. It is not a literary convention. Forty days. The same number of days you have been fasting. The same number of days that have stripped you, shaped you, broken you open, and filled you with something you did not have when you began.
Christ fasted for forty days in the wilderness. You have fasted for forty days in your life. The wilderness was His. The life is yours. But the fast is the same fast. The battle is the same battle. And today, on the fortieth day, the fast reaches its completion and the battle reaches its climax.
Today is the 40th Friday. The Friday before Holy Week begins. Tomorrow and the days that follow will carry us into the Passion of Christ. The Cross is no longer on the horizon. It is here. And before we enter the Passion, the Church brings us back to where it all started. The wilderness. The hunger. The devil. And the Word of God that defeated him.
The Sedro prayer for this day says it plainly:
“He observed the holy fast in order to return us to the state before the transgression. Through fasting He fought against the wicked Satan and removed him from his authority.”
The fast is a weapon. It has always been a weapon. For forty days you have been wielding it. And today, on the fortieth day, the Church tells you why.
Led by the Spirit into the Wilderness (v. 1)
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (4:1)
Led by the Spirit. The same Spirit we met on Day 37 (Romans 8, the Spirit who prays in us) and Day 38 (Galatians 5, the Spirit who produces fruit). The Spirit who has been sustaining the fast from the beginning. The Spirit who cried “Abba, Father” through your tired lips. That Spirit led Christ into the wilderness.
The Spirit does not lead only to mountains of prayer (Day 31) and tables of fellowship (Day 36). The Spirit leads into the wilderness. Into the place of testing. Into the arena where the devil is waiting.
This means our forty days of fasting were not a detour. They were not an interruption to our spiritual life. They were the Spirit’s itinerary. The Spirit led us into this fast the way the Spirit led Christ into the wilderness. Not to destroy us. But to prepare us. To train us. To bring us to the place where the enemy would reveal himself and the Word of God would defeat him.
On Day 27, Paul said “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection.” On Day 34, Christ said “stretch out your hand.” On Day 29, the potter shaped the clay. All of that was preparation. Training. The conditioning that happens before the fight. Today is the fight. And we have been prepared for it.
Forty Days and Forty Nights (v. 2)
“And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.” (4:2)
Forty days. The number that runs through Scripture like a golden thread.
The Qolo hymn for today sings it:
“In the fast of forty days Moses brought down the
The tablets that God had written for Israel.
Through the fasting of Elijah which pleased God,
Heaven and the earth obeyed him and did his will…”
And the Sedro prayer expands the list:
“This is the fast which illumined the face of Moses on the mount of Sinai and enabled him to see God face to face. This is the fast through which Elijah pleased God, who revealed the wickedness of Jezebel… This is the fast which strengthened Hananiah and his companions, which quenched the fiery flames… This is the fast which saved Daniel from the deadly animals’ pit… This is the fast which saved the Ninevites from destruction, punishments, and from death.”
Moses fasted forty days on Sinai and came down with the Law of God, his face shining so brightly the people could not look at him (Exodus 34:28–30). The fast gave him the face of God.
Elijah fasted forty days on the journey to Horeb and heard the still small voice (1 Kings 19:8–12). The fast gave him the voice of God.
Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) chose the discipline of fasting over the king’s food and the furnace could not burn them (Daniel 1:8–16; 3:19–27). The fast gave them the protection of God.
Daniel maintained his fast and his prayers and the lions’ mouths were shut (Daniel 6:10–22). The fast gave him the deliverance of God.
The Ninevites fasted for forty days and the city was spared (Jonah 3:5–10). The fast gave them the mercy of God.
And now Christ. Fasting forty days. Not to receive the Law (He is the Law). Not to hear the voice (He is the Voice). Not to be protected from fire (He will walk through the fire of the Cross voluntarily). Christ fasts forty days to do what Adam could not do. To face the tempter and win.
“Afterward He was hungry.”
The simplest, most human sentence in the passage. He was hungry. The Son of God who made the wheat and the bread and the ovens and the hands that bake was hungry. The Incarnation means real hunger. Real weakness. Real vulnerability. The fast was not a performance. It cost Him something. His body ached. His stomach was empty. His strength was depleted.
And that is exactly when the devil came.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, in his Commentary on the Diatessaron, writes that the devil’s timing reveals his nature. He does not come when you are strong. He comes when you are hungry. Not at the beginning of the fast when the resolve is fresh. At the end. When the body is weakest. When the discipline has consumed every reserve. When the fortieth day has arrived and the person is running on nothing but the Spirit. Ephrem says: the devil is a coward. He fights the exhausted. He attacks the depleted. He comes at the end of the forty days because the beginning would have been too dangerous.1
Today is our fortieth day. We are hungry. We are tired. The fast has been long. The reserves are depleted. And the enemy knows it. This is when the temptation is sharpest. Not on Day 1 when we were fresh. On Day 40 when we are empty.
But the emptiness is not weakness. Day 39 taught us: having nothing, possessing everything. The emptied vessel is the vessel full of God. The hungry Christ is the Christ most dangerous to the devil. Because the hunger has stripped away every false source of strength. And what remains is the Word.
The First Temptation: Bread (vv. 3–4)
“Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, ‘If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”‘” (4:3–4)
“If You are the Son of God.”
The devil begins with identity. Not with an obvious sin. With a question about who Christ is. If You are who You say You are, prove it. Use Your power. Turn stones into bread. Feed Yourself. The hunger is real. The ability is real. The need is real. What could be wrong with eating?
Nothing is wrong with eating. Everything is wrong with obeying the devil. The temptation is not about bread. It is about the source of the command. Who tells You when to eat? Who determines when the fast ends? The Father who led You into the wilderness by the Spirit? Or the devil who shows up on Day 40 and says the fast is over?
Christ answers with Scripture. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy 8:3).
The word is the food. The word sustains. The word that created the bread in the first place is more essential than the bread itself. Christ does not need to turn stones into bread. He has the Word. And the Word is enough.
For forty days we have been learning this. Every day of the fast has been a lesson in living by the Word rather than by bread. Every hunger pang that was answered by Scripture rather than by food was a small victory over the first temptation. Every time we chose prayer over consumption, we were saying what Christ said: man does not live by bread alone.
The Sedro prayer says: “This is the fast through which the Lord of all defeated the boastful adversary who defeated the first Adam, our father, through food.”
Adam was defeated through food. Through eating what was forbidden. Through choosing the fruit over the word. Christ reverses the defeat through fasting. Through refusing to eat when the devil says eat. Through choosing the word over the fruit. The first Adam fell because he ate. The second Adam stands because He fasts.
The Second Temptation: The Temple (vv. 5–7)
“Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written, “He shall give His angels charge over you,” and, “In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”‘ Jesus said to him, ‘It is written again, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.”‘” (4:5–7)
The devil learns from the first round. Christ quoted Scripture. So the devil quotes Scripture back. He cites Psalm 91:11–12. He uses the Word of God against the Word of God. The Bible weaponized. The holy text twisted into a temptation.
“Throw Yourself down.” Test God. Force His hand. Create a crisis that compels a miracle. If You are the Son of God, make God prove it. Jump. And see if the angels catch You.
This is the temptation to turn faith into a test. To manufacture a crisis so that God has to respond. To use spiritual authority for personal validation. To say: I have fasted for forty days. Now God owes me a miracle. Now I deserve a sign. Now the angels had better show up.
Christ answers: “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 6:16).
On Day 26, we learned that we are unprofitable servants. Our duty creates no claim. On Day 25, the rich young ruler discovered that doing everything right does not earn the one thing that matters. Today the same truth appears in the wilderness. Forty days of fasting does not give us the right to test God. We do not jump off the temple because we have fasted. We do not demand miracles because we have been disciplined. The fast is not a contract with God. It is a relationship with God. And in a relationship, we do not test the person we love. We trust them.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homily 13 on Matthew, teaches that the devil’s use of Scripture is the most dangerous temptation of all. He says the devil does not always come with lies. Sometimes he comes with truth. Twisted truth. Half-quoted truth. Scripture torn from its context and aimed at your pride. Chrysostom warns that the person who has fasted for forty days is especially vulnerable to this temptation. Because the fast has made you biblically literate. You know the texts. You can cite the promises. And the devil will use your knowledge against you. He will quote the very passages you have been meditating on and say: see? God promised this. Now demand it. Chrysostom says: Christ’s answer is always the same. Scripture interprets Scripture. One text cannot be weaponized in isolation. The whole Word of God corrects the parts.2
The Third Temptation: The Kingdoms (vv. 8–10)
“Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.”‘” (4:8–10)
The final temptation. The most naked. No pretense of concern. No disguise of Scripture. Just the raw offer. All the kingdoms. All the glory. Everything the world values. Power. Wealth. Influence. Territory. All of it. For one act. One bow. One moment of worship directed away from the Father and toward the enemy.
This is the temptation to take a shortcut. The kingdoms will eventually belong to Christ. The Father has promised Him the nations as His inheritance (Psalm 2:8). But the road to that inheritance runs through the Cross. Through suffering. Through death. Through the grave. The devil offers the same destination without the road. Why suffer? Why die? Why go through the Passion? Bow to me and the kingdoms are Yours without the Cross.
On Day 36, the Passion prediction was spoken. The disciples understood nothing. Today the devil offers Christ a way to avoid everything the Passion prediction described. No mocking. No scourging. No killing. Just a bow. And the kingdoms are His.
Christ’s answer is the strongest of the three. “Away with you, Satan!” Hupage, Satana! The only time in the passage Christ addresses the devil directly. No Scripture first. First the command. Get out. And then the Scripture: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve” (Deuteronomy 6:13).
The kingdoms of the world are not worth one act of worship directed away from the Father. Nothing is. No shortcut. No bypass. No avoidance of the Cross. The road goes through the Passion because the Passion is how the kingdoms are truly won. Not by the devil’s gift. By the Father’s plan. Through the Cross. Through the death. Through the tomb. And out the other side into a kingdom that has no end.
The Sedro prayer captures this with devastating clarity:
“This is the fast through which the Lord of all defeated the boastful adversary who defeated the first Adam, our father, through food. Therefore, O Jesus Christ, who gave us this means for the sake of our salvation, we beseech You. Strengthen us, so that we may become like the forefathers who pleased You. Make us worthy to fight in this battle, at the least as the workers of the eleventh hour.”
Workers of the eleventh hour. The ones who arrived late. Who did not fast from the beginning. Who came in at the end and were given the same wage as those who bore the burden and the heat of the day. The prayer does not claim to be heroes of the fast. It asks only to be counted among the last-minute workers. The humility of Day 40. Not “we have completed the fast; reward us.” But “make us worthy to fight, at least as the latecomers.” Even on the fortieth day, the posture is humility. Even at the finish line, the prayer is “have mercy.”
The Angels Came and Ministered to Him (v. 11)
“Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.” (4:11)
The devil left. He will return (Luke 4:13 says “until an opportune time”). But for now, he leaves. Defeated. Not by power. Not by a display of divine force. By the Word of God spoken from a hungry mouth. By Scripture quoted by a fasting man. By obedience sustained through forty days of emptiness.
And the angels came. After the battle. After the victory. Not during. Not to help Him fight. To minister to Him afterward. To bring food, perhaps. To comfort. To tend to the body that has been fasting for forty days and fighting the enemy of the human race.
The angels did not come on Day 1. They came on Day 40. After the fast. After the temptation. After the victory. The comfort follows the fight. The ministering follows the battle. The angels are waiting. But they wait until the fight is over.
St. Athanasius the Great, in On the Incarnation and his Life of Antony, teaches that the pattern of Christ’s temptation is the pattern of every Christian’s spiritual warfare. The enemy comes when you are weak. The weapon is the Word. The victory is achieved through obedience, not through spectacle. And when the battle is over, God sends His angels. The comfort that has been withheld during the fight is given freely after the fight. Athanasius says the desert fathers knew this pattern from their own experience. The night of temptation is always followed by the morning of consolation. The forty days of fasting are always followed by the ministry of angels. But the angels cannot come until the fast is complete. Because the fast is the fight. And the fight must be fought before the victory can be celebrated.3
What the 40th Friday Means
Today is the hinge. The forty days are complete. The fast that began with the first prayer on the first day has reached its destination. Not the final destination. The Cross is still ahead. Holy Week is still to come. But the training is finished. The forty days that Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Hananiah, the Ninevites, and Christ Himself knew are behind you.
The Qolo hymn for this day sings:
“For forty days a fast was kept in Nineveh, and it pleased the Lord. Hananiah and his friends fasted forty days, and the flames were quenched. May we, O Lord, who have fasted forty days receive forgiveness of sins.”
The prayer is not triumphant. It is penitential. “May we receive forgiveness.” Not “we have earned forgiveness.” The forty days have taught us, if they have taught us nothing else, that the fast does not earn. The fast prepares. The fast trains. The fast strips away everything that is not essential until what remains is a hungry person standing in the wilderness with nothing but the Word of God and the Spirit of adoption.
And that is enough. It was enough for Christ. It is enough for us.
The second Qolo adds:
“We know that our sins are great, Lord, and we know that great are Your mercies. And if Your mercy should not persuade You, we shall perish from our sins. Take not away Your hand from us, Lord, whom You have saved by Your precious blood!”
The fortieth day does not end with a victory lap. It ends with a plea for mercy. The sins are great. The mercy is greater. The blood is precious. And the hand of God is the only thing between us and perishing.
This is the posture for entering Holy Week. Not the confidence of a person who has completed a forty-day programme. The humility of a person who has discovered, over forty days, just how much he needs the Cross. The fast did not make us holy. The fast showed us how much we need the One who is holy. And that One is about to walk into Jerusalem on a donkey, wash His disciples’ feet, break bread at a table, sweat blood in a garden, stand before Pilate, carry wood to Golgotha, and breathe His last on a Friday afternoon.
The forty days prepared us to watch. To understand what we are seeing. To know that the Man on the Cross is the same Man who stood in the wilderness and refused to turn stones into bread. The same Man who refused to jump from the temple. The same Man who refused the kingdoms on the devil’s terms. He chose the Cross. He chose the road that goes through death. Because that is the road that leads to life.
For Our Journey Today
Complete the fast with humility. The Sedro prayer asks God to “make us worthy to fight in this battle, at the least as the workers of the eleventh hour.” Do not finish the forty days with pride. Finish with the prayer of the latecomers. “We know that our sins are great, Lord, and we know that great are Your mercies.” Forty days of fasting have not made you righteous. They have shown you how much you need the Righteous One.
Take up the Word. Christ defeated every temptation with Scripture. “It is written.” Three times the devil attacked. Three times the Word of God was the weapon. Today, as we stand on the threshold of Holy Week, take up the Word. Not as information. As armor. The passages we have read during these forty days are not content we consumed. They are the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). Carry them into the Passion. We will need them.
Let the angels come. The ministry of angels follows the completion of the fast. The comfort that has been withheld during the training is given freely after the training. Today, receive the comfort. We have fasted. We have fought. We have endured. The angels are not a reward. They are a gift. The Father sends them because the fight is over. Not because we won. Because He won. Through us. With the Word in our mouth and the Spirit at our back. The comfort is arriving. Receive it.
Lord Jesus Christ, who fasted forty days and forty nights in the wilderness and defeated the devil with the Word of God, we stand at the end of our forty days. We are hungry. We are tired. The reserves are depleted. And we confess that the enemy has not stopped coming. He came when we were weak. He used Scripture against us. He offered shortcuts around the Cross. And sometimes we fell. Sometimes the stones became bread. Sometimes we jumped from the temple. Sometimes we bowed to what was not God. Forgive us. We are the workers of the eleventh hour. We arrived late. We did not fast perfectly. We did not fight cleanly. But we are here. On the fortieth day. Still standing. Not by our strength. By Your Word. By Your Spirit. By the grace that carried us when the willpower ran out. Now send the angels. Not because we earned them. Because the fight is over. And the next fight, the fight of the Passion, begins tomorrow. Strengthen us for what is ahead. The Cross. The blood. The tomb. And beyond the tomb, the morning that changes everything. We know that our sins are great, Lord. And we know that great are Your mercies. Take not away Your hand from us, whom You have saved by Your precious blood. By the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, and all the saints, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
A blessed fortieth day of the Great Lent. The fast of Moses. The fast of Elijah. The fast of Hananiah. The fast of Daniel. The fast of the Ninevites. The fast of Christ. And now, by the mercy of God, your fast. Forty days complete. The devil is defeated by the Word. The angels are arriving. And ahead: the Passion. The Cross. The tomb. And beyond the tomb, the light that never ends. “Make us worthy to fight in this battle, at the least as the workers of the eleventh hour.”
