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02/25/2007 |
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FR. OLMAN’S HOMILY February 25, 2007 Our focus today is upon
one who made the right choices: Jesus.
We find them in the wilderness.
He is thinking. He is considering
the direction of his life. And he is
being tempted in a major way. One
temptation was to turn a stone into bread.
The tempter said: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to
become a loaf of bread”. That was a challenge.
Why? Well, if he could do it, wouldn’t
he have gained a large following as a provider of food for the masses? Some well-meaning Christians have found that
hungry people will show up at the church in order to be given food later. But when the bread isn’t there, will they
still come to enjoy “the bread of life”, the Lord himself? Jesus spurned that temptation by saying “one
does not live by bread alone” that was strike one for the Enemy. The Tempter then tried to
toy with Jesus’ mind. “See all the kingdoms of the world. You could have power over all of them. They would all give you glory and authority
if you follow my leadership and worship me”
Now that was a mind-dazzler.
Power, wealth, glory =what else might one desire? But Jesus said, “It is
written, worship the Lord you God, and serve only him”. That was strike two for the Tempter. Then the Tempter started
quoting scripture. “ It is written, God
will command his angels…to protect you and on their hands they will bear you up
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone” he told Jesus that if that was so, he could
hurl himself down form the top of the great temple and not be hurt. The temptation was to do
the miraculous, to use magic and entertainment to win the admiration of the
masses. Wouldn’t that cause them to
flock to him? Jesus refused the
temptation. It would have compelled God
to go against the laws of nature, the law of gravity. It would have been putting God to the test
and Jesus was not about to do that. With Christ’s refusal to
give in to that temptation, the Tempter struck out. Indeed he went on his way until another time. At the root of all the
temptations was the vision of a glorious political messiah ship which was wide
spread and had penetrated the soul of the people of Why did he submit himself to such temptations?
Perhaps to teach us that temptations are part of the human condition. No matter how good we are, temptations will
always be part of our lives. Being good
is not a matter of not having any temptations but in not giving in to them. To be a good person means
to always be ready to say “no” to what we now love. That is one of the purposes for the season of
Lent: to give us practice in saying “no” to what we love. It is not that our tendency to love is
bad. Indeed, it is part of our
nature. As “Am I telling you to love
nothing at all? Not al all! If you love nothing you will be lifeless, dead,
detestable, miserable. Go ahead and
love, but be careful what you love.” Temptation is nothing
more than an urge to love in the wrong way: to misuses or misdirect those
natural drives that make us human. Thus it is natural for us
to want to live and to o live well every day with both body and spirit at
peace. But it is a perverse love that makes
food or drink or sexual pleasure or simply “having a good time here and now”
become the one goal of our life. It is a
perversity for us as eternal beings to be willing to sacrifice anything and
anyone for a supposed secure life in this world of passing time. It is natural for us to
want to love and be loved. But it is a
perverse love (and some what sad) when we try to possess that love and dominate
that love so that it will never leave us.
It is perverse because we are all pilgrims who are meant to move along,
not stay in place. Our loves will leave
is in death if no way else and it is truly sad to love a passing thing as
though it would remain forever. It is natural for us to
want to have meaning in our life, to have some importance. But it is a perverse love which causes an
ambition that will trample all values, all people in order to get ahead. It is natural for us to
want ot be free, to be able to stand on our own two feet, ot be in control of
our lives. But it is a perverse love of
freedom that makes s want to be answerable to no one, to have no
responsibility, to want to be God. Our problem is that we
are “cracked” lovers surrounded in this world by many lovely things. When they are loved too much or in a wrong
way they can draw us away from God. It
is because we are lovers that we must have a time of Lent so that we can make
our loving the truly lovely thing it was meant to be. Augustine said that the
secret to a good life comes down to two things: we must control ourselves and
we must endure. We must control ourselves
during the happy times when we are in possession of our lives, that we do not
become so overcome with the pleasure of having them that we are unwilling to
let their lives or our lives move on.
But we must also be ready to endure those times when we must deny
satisfaction of our love because what we love or the way we are loving stands
in the way of our eternal salvation. The
purpose of Lent is to act like Christ tempted by the devil – to say no to any
temptation that could separate us from God. Christ suffered
temptation in order to teach us that we can be victorious over temptations by
God’s grace. |
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