(Ivan Kramskoi)
". . . and afterwards he was hungry . . ."
The Word for Sunday: http://usccb.org/bible/readings/030914.cfm
Gn 2: 7-9; 3: 1-7
Rm 5: 12-19
Mt 4: 1-11
Now
and then we all have days in which something just doesn’t go right. In fact, it may be a series of events that
just seem to snowball one after the other which causes us frustration and
disappointment until they finally even out.
So often in ministry we find that interruptions are the norm rather than
the exception. One works hard at certain
arrangements and in the end you find that “plan B” is necessary. It may be something small like a glitch in
the sound system or a scheduled person who cannot show up at the last minute or
something far more serious that may cause you to cancel an event all together.
As
we begin this First Sunday of Lent we hear a well-known story from Genesis that
indeed something went wrong with humanity not long after God created us. Things did not work out as originally
planned. God “blew into his (Adam’s) nostrils the breath of life . . .” God
then created Eve and set these two first human beings in a Garden, rich with beautiful
trees and abundant fruit. Then, the
snake appears and both man and woman believe the serpent’s lie and take to
themselves their own will over that of God.
That original sin of disobedience which caused shame and guilt to enter,
exhibited by the embarrassment of their nakedness, now needed to be corrected. A
savior would need to obey – a new Adam must come for we could not save
ourselves from our own sin.
St.
Paul in Romans reminds us that through one man (Christ Jesus), “the gracious
gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.” Through Christ Jesus, “the many will be made
righteous.” So, rather than a garden, a desert would be the place to confront
evil and its source again.
St.
Matthew’s Gospel passage is rich with drama as we see Jesus, “led by the Spirit
into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”
Here our new Adam must now face the sin of all humanity which he had
taken upon himself. In the most vulnerable
time of his desert experience, the tempter approaches for after forty days and
nights of fasting, Jesus “was hungry.”
We could assume he was weak and thirsty as well. In his weakness, the devil approached and
near slithers up to Jesus like the serpent in the garden.
As
the first sin was the result of food, so now the first temptation addresses
physical hunger: “. . . command these stones become loaves of bread.” Unsuccessful,
the tempter moves to the human desire for self-rule: “If you are the Son of
God, throw yourself down.” God will catch you.
Lastly, the final temptation confronts our hunger for pride, power, and
prestige. As Jesus is shown “all the
kingdoms of the world in their magnificence,” he demands that Jesus bow before
the tempter and he can have them all: worldly fame, money, and all the advantage
the world can bring. All three
temptations together are essentially a means to grab the easy way, the way of
my will above that of God’s and essentially for Jesus to abandon his mission of
death and resurrection for which he was sent among us to break through the wall
and power of sin (death) which estranged us from God. We all know he did not succumb
to the devil’s attempts.
Thereby,
Lent is an invitation to find our spiritual desert where we confront the truth
of our lives. Here we may find something
that upsets us, something we know has to change, or something for which we are
grateful yet still need more help. Yet,
the greatest gift is to know that we are not alone in the desert of isolation because
we can and should call upon our Lord to come with us. To believe that God is greater than our sin and
more powerful than the forces of evil around us is to know that his mercy and
forgiveness is here to call us to a new direction and a new life.
Whenever
the moment arrived and reflecting glass provided a mirror, much better than
staring into a pond of water, I wonder what the first reactions were like. Once we could see ourselves as we are did we
like what we saw? Much more likely we
could see the many imperfections – a wrinkle here, a gray hair there, a little
too chubby here, a nose or ear not proportioned properly, lips too thin,
forehead too wide, etc. We could all go
on and on. The cosmetic industry spends
billions of dollars fixing the outside of us but Lent is not cosmetic
surgery.
In
the Lenten desert we should see ourselves as we are and turn to the grace of
God to correct the faults of our souls and lead us to holiness and virtue which
is true beauty. May the grace of God
lead us to a healing desert in these weeks ahead of us. The sacraments of Reconciliation and the holy
Eucharist are powerful tools provided by Jesus our Divine Physician who showed
us how we might be “made righteous” before God in this ancient desert time.
Grant,
almighty God,
through
the yearly observances of holy Lent,
that we
may grow in understanding
of the
riches hidden in Christ
and by
worthy conduct pursue their effects.
(Collect of Mass)
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