Gospel Reflection 20080210
Keep knocking on God's door.Like a loving parent, God wants only the best for us. Our prayer should be confident, not timid, knowing that God will answer if we are persistent in our knocking. Let's do the same thing when others knock on our door for help.
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When You're Put to the Test, Do You Prove That You're a True Christian?
February 10, 2008
First Sunday of Lent
Gospel
Mt 4:1-11
At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert
to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights,
and afterwards he was hungry.
The tempter approached and said to him,
“If you are the Son of God,
command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
He said in reply,
“It is written:
One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth
from the mouth of God.”
Then the devil took him to the holy city,
and made him stand on the parapet of the temple,
and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written:
He will command his angels concerning you
and with their hands they will support you,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered him,
“Again it is written,
You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,
and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you,
if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”
At this, Jesus said to him,
“Get away, Satan!
It is written:
The Lord, your God, shall you worship
and him alone shall you serve.”
Then the devil left him and, behold,
angels came and ministered to him.
The African lion and the wild cat look so much alike, yet they are different. An ancient African theory explains it this way. The same lioness gives birth to numerous cubs some of which are truly lions at heart and some of which are not. How does the mother lion know which is which? Months after the birth of the cubs, just before they are weaned, the mother lion leaves the den and then, in an unsuspecting moment, she jumps into the den with a thundering roar as if she was an enemy attacking the cubs. Some of the cubs stand up and fight back the presumed enemy while others flee the den with their tails between their legs. The cubs that hold their ground to face the danger prove themselves to be real lions. Those that run away prove to be mere wild cats, false lions. As testing distinguish true lions from the false so also does it prove true Christians from false ones.
Under the old covenant God subjected His people Israel to testing in the desert. They failed that test, which made a new covenant necessary. In today’s gospel reading we see Jesus the bearer of the new covenant being subjected to testing again in the desert. He stands his ground and gives the enemy a good fight, thus showing that he is truly the Son of God. Immediately before the Temptations of Jesus, Matthew has the story of the baptism of Jesus in which a heavenly voice declared of him: “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). As he leaves the baptismal waters of Jordan to embark on his public ministry as the Anointed Son of God he had to go through the test. No child of God can go without trials, because this is the means to distinguish between a true and a false child of God. As Ben Sirach advises, “My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing” (Sirach 2:1).
Somehow we can understand, and are more comfortable with, the idea of testing or trial than with the idea of temptation. The fact, however, is that testing or trial or temptation are one and the same thing. In fact they all translate the same Greek word peirasmos. When we see the situation as coming from God, who would like us to pass the test, we call it a test or trial. And when we see it as coming from the evil one, who would like us to fail, we call it temptation. But both trials and temptations are experienced by us in exactly the same way: as a situation where the principle of evil (the devil) and the principle of good (the Holy Spirit) in us are vying for our allegiance and whichever one we vote for wins and becomes the master of our lives until we can reverse the decision.
Jesus is given three tests. The first one, to turn stones into bread, has to do with how we use our God-given gifts, talents and abilities. The temptation is for us to use our gifts to make a living for ourselves. But Paul tells us that spiritual gifts are given to the individual “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Jesus would later on in his ministry multiply bread to feed others. But he would not do it to feed himself. Do we see our talents and abilities, our jobs and professions, as a means to serve others or simply as a means to make a living for ourselves?
In the second test Jesus is tempted to prove that he is God’s son by jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple and letting the angels catch him as was promised in the Scripture: “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” (Psalm 91/90:11). Though Jesus fully believes the word of God, he would not put God to the test. This contrasts sharply with the case of a college student in Nigeria who claimed that he was born again and to prove it he jumped into the lion’s cage in the zoo because the Bible promises that nothing can ever harm God’s children. Maybe his soul is in heaven today but his body provided a special lunch for the hungry lions that day.
In the third temptation the devil promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth if only Jesus would worship him. Jesus wants the whole world to acknowledge him, of course, but would he achieve that by worshipping a false god? Can we pursue our goals by any means whatsoever? Does the end justify the means? Jesus says no. He remains steadfast and faithful to God, rejecting the short cuts offered by the devil. In the end he attains an end more glorious than that offered by the devil: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).
Today, let us realize that as God’s children we too are under constant testing. If you do not know it, then try to answer these questions: Will you keep believing in God whether or not you get that one thing that you have always been praying for? Would you still believe that God loves you if you or your loved one contracted a shameful disease that has no cure, and God does not give you healing in spite of all your prayers? Do you sometimes put God to the test and say: “If you do this for me, then I will serve you, but if not, I will have nothing more to do with you.” Jesus shows us today that to serve God is to surrender ourselves to Him unconditionally and in all situations.
No one likes being lied to, especially if the liar is trying to use attractive appearances to hurt you. I remember the wicked witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs who tried to get Snow White to eat a juicy red apple …which had been poisoned. The delightful appearance was in truth a death-trap.
More than in previous generations, much of modern living takes place in the realm of appearances, not just in consumerism, or in the cult of taste, touch, smell, sound and sight, but in every dimension of life, from false understandings of prosperity to fake expressions of solidarity. What looks, good, seems good, sounds good, feels good –i.e. anything but what is good- is sold to us as the basis for our choices. What is worse, we are told not to worry about the bad effects, the hangovers, because they are worth enduring for the sake of the experience you have had. Never mind what harm you do, we are told, to others or to yourself: people will just have to “get over it”. You have a right to do your own thing, and to hell with what anyone else thinks!
If you make choices only on the basis of appearances or good feelings, your life itself will become an appearance and little more than a feeling. That’s almost the same thing as saying that you will yourself become an illusion who has lived the life of an animal. The fundamental error is, of course, that what feels and looks good has taken the place of what is good. Animals do not ask themselves what is good or bad, for they have no reason; they cannot choose what is good or bad, because they have no free will. A human person, then, who lives his life, solely on the basis of appearances and feelings, is living without reason and without real freedom: he has become irrational and irresponsible. Such people have sacrificed their reason and their freedom or responsibility to the idol of self-indulgence; they have sacrificed their reason by believing the lie and so they have lied to themselves; they have become a living lie; and they may even try to propagate their lie as the truth and so, in a tragic perversion, declare the truth to be a lie. They have sacrificed their freedom by obeying appearances, and by calling the ensuing slavery a life of liberation.
This is, of course, the work of Satan, the Father of lies, or Beelzebub. When he speaks or acts, he automatically lies, because he is the supreme personification of the liar. He is the Liar with a capital “L’! In his cynical dialogue with both Eve and Jesus, his aim is to get each one to drink in his poison. The main purpose of his tactics is to persuade both that free obedience to the truth of God is not as desirable as obedience to his lies. He tries to paint God as the liar, to persuade that God’s demands are really a form of oppression, a way of keeping his “victims” from self-fulfillment, from becoming gods themselves. Of course, Satan measures his temptations according to the customer. To Eve he promises that disobedience will bring divinity; in the case of Jesus, he could not do that, since Jesus was divine, so what he does is tempt Jesus to doubt his divinity (“if you are the Son of God”). In all cases, Satan seeks to make the truth look like poison, and to make lies look tasty and delightful. To get his client to pass from truth to lie, he has to work on their freedom, for freedom is the power which gives life to the truth or to the lie. He must get freedom’s no to the lie to become freedom’s yes to the lie, and when freedom has said yes to the lie, then freedom itself becomes untrue. The more the yes to the lie is repeated and confirmed, the less free freedom becomes. But when freedom says no to the lie, and therefore yes to the truth, freedom itself becomes truer, it becomes freer. In the words of Jesus, “the truth will set you free.”
Eve lets Satan mortally wound her freedom by seducing her into disobedience; she becomes vulnerable to evil, symbolized in her sense of nakedness, and vulnerable to the judgment of God’s truth, symbolized in her hiding. Jesus, however, on a much higher plane, yet still in a truly human way, defends the supremacy of God’s truth, even when it costs his humanity dearly. The increasing intensity of the devil’s temptations (first, the satisfaction of bodily needs; then the satisfaction of religious power; then the satisfaction of earthly power) elicits also the increasing intensity of the human freedom of Jesus in saying no, no to the lie of a happiness centered egoistically on himself and thus, eventually, on the worship of Satan, on devil worship. This no of Jesus contradicts and counteracts the yes of Eve; this no to lies is just another way of speaking of renunciation. Jesus does not renounce bread because it is bread or because he wants to stay hungry; he renounces it as a way of saying no to the diabolical lie that his divine power is to be used for his own advantage. In saying this no, he is saying yes to the word that comes from the mouth of his heavenly Father. Jesus fasts, not from bread, but from disobedience, and not just for forty days and nights, but throughout his earthly existence. Because of this fast from sin, the devil has no handle with which to demand submission from Jesus, either in life or in death. Death is powerless over Jesus because Jesus is sinless. You can therefore say that in affirming his obedience to the Father and his rejection of Satan during the temptations, Jesus is already anticipating his death (no to Satan) and resurrection (yes to the Father). Jesus unmasks all deception, all lying appearances, and he restores to the children of Eve the power to know the truth that will set them free from Satan, sin and death.
Keeping all of this in mind, we need to ask ourselves, at all times: where are the lies in my life? Where is the apparent freedom which is in fact disobedience to God? Where am I still a banished child of Eve and where does Jesus, my victor and hero, call me to liberation from evil and to intimate companionship with himself? When I take a look at my day, can I have the courage to look beyond the appearances, the vanity, the self-concern in order to see the truth and to find liberation in obedience to it? How am I trying to make my own Jesus’ renunciation of lies and his embracing of God’s will? Is my fasting itself false, a pious excuse to lose weight, to save money, to congratulate myself, to attract applause from others? Maybe I give up alcohol, drugs, candy, but what meaning can that have if I still refuse to be reconciled with a relative or friend, if I bear grudges for months and years, if I remain distant from my own spouse or children, if I refuse to love? Is fasting of any use when I still look at pornography online or offline, when I cheat on my spouse, when I lie to all and sundry? What use is my prayer and almsgiving when I will not listen to what Christ asks of me in my married life, in my duties of justice and fairness, of sexual chastity and responsibility? Is the Lord pleased when I will not confess my sins, or teach my children how to believe, hope, love and pray? In other words, are not many of our efforts merely appearances of virtue when, in truth, we are mocking God with our superficiality and banality?
Don’t get me wrong. Renunciation is always good if it proceeds from a sincere heart and desires to please God. It disciplines our wills and helps ready us for works of charity and of other virtues. It is better to do a little than nothing. But you cannot treat cancer with an aspirin. This is not a time to play games with God or with our spiritual lives. It is a time to repent, deeply, wholly and truly from the cancer of pride and self-deception which eats away at our souls and delights the Devil. This should cause an earthquake, a spiritual tsunami, a revolution within us.
Christ loves you. Prove that you believe it by fasting from the lies and deception which hide the true and beautiful face of your soul from God, from others and from yourself.
posted by Mike Young @ 6:10 AM
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