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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.
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Q&A

If Jesus Had to Be “Driven” by the Spirit into the Desert, Does That Mean He Was Resisting?

Jimmy Akin

Question:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (538) says that Jesus was "driven" by the Spirit into the desert after his baptism by John. It sounds like he was resisting.

Answer:

That is not the intent. The statement is an allusion to Mark’s Gospel, where the phrase is used (Mk 1:12). Matthew and Luke also mention Jesus’ sojourn in the desert, but without the dramatic phrasing. For example, Luke states: “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit . . . was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness.” This emphasizes the positive cooperation of Jesus with the Spirit.

Mark’s more dramatic phrasing is simply part of his style. Mark uses powerful action words to convey to his Roman audience that Jesus was a man of action. Action impressed Romans more than philosophical reflection, which impressed Greeks. Thus, Luke’s Gospel, written for a Greek, stresses Jesus’ reflective side, while Mark, writing to Romans, stresses Jesus’ active side.

The word “drove” does not mean that Jesus was resisting the Spirit. Instead, Mark is trying to show how powerfully the Spirit brought Jesus into the desert. The idea is not of one Person driving and one Person resisting, but both dynamically cooperating.

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