By Fr Antony Christy, SDB –
The Word in Lent: 1st Sunday
Temptations: Crisis, Choice and Clarity
March 1, 2020: Genesis 2:7-9,3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Temptation is a daily experience, sometimes consciously lived through and some other times unconsciously. However much we try to, we cannot live a life without temptations – that would even make life uneventful and our commitment less challenging. Big, small, mighty, risky, simple, profound, drastic… temptations can vary in their dimensions and gravity but the fact is, they are there!
The Word today invites us to look at these moments of temptation as Spiritual moments, moments out of which we can grow, moments through which we can deepen our faith experience and re-found our footing in our journey towards spiritual perfection. This happens when we are ready to enter into a profound dialogue with God, our Father, our Mother, our Master, our Maker, our Model, the one who challenges us to perfection: Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect!
Temptation …is a moment of CRISIS. Crisis, is probably the word that is heard the most today. World economic crisis, the political crisis in parts of Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle east, the ethical crisis, the faith crisis and so on. Crisis is simply the experience of a drastic reduction of something that has to be. Lack of money, lack of political stability, lack of ethical certainty, lack of adherence to faith… at the ground of it all there is a fundamental lack – the lack of meaning, the lack of sense of worth, the lack of real fulfillment in life.
The Gospel today gives us a beautiful insight into this situation of crisis, the moment of temptation. ‘At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil’…and the insight is this: The Spirit of the Lord is present with us, as ever, even at the moment when we feel tempted!
That is a tremendous insight. When we go through a moment of crisis, a moment of difficulty, a moment of tendency to sin, a moment of pressure to give up, we think we are all alone. No! We are not alone. The Spirit of the Lord is with us, ever present beside us. All that we need to do, is to turn to the Spirit – in a profound dialogue. Listen to the whispering of the Spirit and speak our heart out at those crucial moments, as did Jesus in the Gospel today. And the Spirit will give us the strength to fight and overcome those temptations unscathed.
Temptation …is a moment of CHOICE. Every crisis requires a categorical choice to be made. When Eve was faced with that situation standing in front of the tree, she had to make a choice – to be God’s or to be like gods! And Adam, when he was faced with a situation, in front of Eve, he had to make a choice to conform or to challenge, to compromise or to stand firm! Jesus makes that choice… not to make himself a king or ‘like god’, but to belong to God always and remain the loving son of God; not to conform to the power seeking, pleasure-mad world order but to challenge it and to stand firm in his identity as the son of God.
All that we need to do, turn to our innermost self in dialogue, look at our origins and see who we really are. As the first reading of today says, we have the breath of God within us; we are sons and daughters of a God who has loved us into existence. I remember the counsel the Director of Novices, when we were novices, used to give us: when you are faced with moments of crisis in your religious life, think of the first moments when you felt called by God.
That is a wise counsel, and the Word today gives us the same. When you are faced with a difficulty, a lack of meaning, return to your origins… the moments when you felt loved by God, called by god, chosen by God and commissioned to live this life… and the life will become meaningful with all its ingredients – sadness and joy, love and suffering, loneliness and celebration. Turn to your inner self in dialogue, you would see there the real you! Restart your journey from there.
Temptation …is a moment of CLARITY. If we go through the moments of crisis and difficulty in dialogue with the Spirit, in dialogue with the Word made flesh, and in dialogue with the counsel of the persons of God, we shall come out of those trying situations with a clarity that has never been there before. It is not merely the calm that comes after the storm, but a step further in one’s maturity, a state deeper in one’s self understanding, as the person relearns the basics through the experience.
St. Paul affirms this, in the second reading as he reminds us of the ‘abundance of grace’ and the ‘gift of justification’ that comes from Jesus Christ! In and through the moments of temptation, if lived in dialogue with the Spirit, we shall learn to love God above anything else, as Jesus exemplifies. More than the needs of food and drink, more than proving himself powerful to the world and more than having the dominion of the world, Jesus chose God, chose to remain faithful to God, chose to love, serve and worship God and God alone! The lesson is clear to us: Give God the central place in our lives, the prime place in our lives, come what may.
Let us live our lives, every moment of it, in dialogue with the Spirit, specially moments of difficulty and crisis! Inspired by the Spirit, strengthened by the Word of God and nourished by the Sacraments, our daily dialogue shall become salvific. During our moments of temptation, let us turn to the Spirit, and the Spirit will remind us to return to our Origins and we will learn to the love God above all.
Let our prayer today be – A clean heart create for me O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me! Amen.
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.