Jesus Teaching How to Overcome Vices with Virtue

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..The Divine Teacher of all holiness did not wish to commence His preaching nor to be known as our Redeemer without having first triumphed over our enemies, over the world, the demon and the flesh, in order that afterwards He might so much the more easily overcome the hellish deceits continually spread about by satan. 

By His heroic exercises of virtue He wished to give us the first lesson of a Christian and spiritual life and to teach us by these triumphs of Christian perfection, how we are to strengthen our weakness and discourage our common enemies by continued battle and victories, lest we be otherwise delivered over to them by the fluctuations of our own wills. 

Although Jesus, as being God, was infinitely above the demon and, as man without deceit of sin, supremely holy and the Master over all creation (1 Pet. 2, 22); He nevertheless wished to overcome in His human nature, by His personal justice and holiness, all the vices and their author; and, therefore, He offered His most holy humanity to the buffetings of temptation, concealing His superiority from His invisible enemies.

A loving Father, whose sons have committed great crimes for which they are to endure the most horrible punishment, sacrifices all his possessions in order to ward off their impending fate: so for us sons, our most loving Father, Creator, and Brother, Jesus Christ, wished to pay our debts.

During Jesus forty day fast and temptations in the desert after His baptism, He offered His profound humility in satisfaction for our pride,; for our avarice, He offered His voluntary poverty and total privation of all that was His; for our base and lustful inclinations, He offered His penance and austerity; for our hastiness and vengeful anger, He offered His meekness and charity toward his enemies; for our negligence and laziness, He offered His ceaseless labors; for our deceitfulness and our envy, He offered His candid and upright sincerity and the sweetness of His loving intercourse. 

In this manner He continued to appease the just Judge and solicited pardon for us disobedient and bastard children; and He not only obtained this pardon for all of us, but He merited for us new graces and favors, so that we might make ourselves worthy of His company and of the vision of His Father and His own inheritance for all eternity. Amen