The Reverend Noel E. Bordador,The Episcopal Church (TEC)
Ps 51:3-6, 12-14, 17
Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matt 4:1-11
[I write this reflection in honor of Sister Elenita Belardo, RGS, National Coordinator of the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) and the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines, Northern Mindanao (RMP-NMR) especially Z, F, Sister MJC and Sister MS, the copra and abaca makers, the farmers, lumads and aktibistas of Bukidnon who, eight years ago, taught me about the deep suffering of our people, and the need for the Church- especially the clergy- to participate in the national struggle for justice and lasting peace.]
The great Trappist monastic, Thomas Merton (1915-1968), distinguished what he called “true self” from “false self.” God, who is Love, created us for love, but not just any love for there is love that is in opposition to God. Authentic godly love is one that is giving, generous, selfless, and God-centered. False love is one that is self-centered and selfish. Thus, Merton says,
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason
for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness
is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.1
We discover our “true self” when we live a life that is marked by selfless love, and obedience to the will of God. However, because we are fallen beings, we are also prone to living the lie of the “false self” which Merton described as follows:
My false and private self is the one who wants to exists outside the reach
of God’s will…All sin starts from the assumption that my false self,
the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental
reality of life to which everything else in the universe.2
For Merton, the holiness of life to which we are called in baptism is about the recovery of our “true self.” It begins by a deliberate turning away from our “false self.”
To be a saint means to be my true self. Therefore the problem of
sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I truly
am and of discovering my true self, me essence or core.3
The only human who did not have a false self is the human-divine, Jesus, because, as the Church Father Saint Maximus the Confessor (580-662) said, Jesus possessed a “natural will,” that is, an “unfallen” will which was perfectly aligned with the will of God. The rest of humanity possess a “gnomic will,” a “fallen” will that often desires and follows that which is opposed to God’s will.
Jesus’ true self, his very identity is inextricably linked with his incarnation, and his divine mission to live a life of loving service of God’s people. From eternity, the Word was predestined to share his life with us by becoming one of us in the human Jesus of Nazareth. But this incarnation required a certain divine renunciation. In that great early Christian hymn found in Philippians 2:5-11, Jesus is praised as One who, though God, did not deem equality with God, something he could have exploited. Rather, he emptied himself (kenosis) of divine privilege and power, and in humility, he assumed the lowliness of human nature, in fact becoming, a “slave” (doulos) of all. The same renunciation/kenotic theme is found in another Pauline (second) letter to the Corinthians (8:9): Christ, though he was rich, renounced his riches and became poor so that through his poverty we might become rich. Necessary to the incarnation is the divine renunciation and self-emptying in order for God to share in the totality of human life, including in our poverty, suffering and death. The basis of this divine renunciation is, of course, none other than God’s infinite love for humanity. Out of love, God chose to live with us in abject poverty, share in the suffering of God’s people, and suffer death as a condemned criminal.
The great Spanish Discalced Carmelite Doctor mysticus, San Juan de la Cruz (1542-1591), once wrote a wonderful reflection on the incarnation. In his “Romances Sobre El Evangelio ‘In Principio Erat Verbum’”, he takes the theme of the “wonderful exchange” that occurred in the birth of Christ and expounded on it. In Christ’s birth, there was an exchange: God gave humanity his divinity, and we gave God our very humanity. But in this exchange (trueque) humanity also gave God its tears of suffering (llanto) and God gave us his joy (alegria).
God there in the manger
cried and moaned;
and these tears were jewels…
The Mother gazed in sheer wonder
on such an exchange:
in God, man’s weeping,
and in man, gladness
to the one and to the other
things usually so strange.4
- What would happen if the powerful rich were to follow the example of Jesus who, though rich, became poor so that others who are poor might become rich?
- What would happen if the powerful rich were to follow the example of Jesus who shared in the untold “weeping” of the masses?
There is Good News for the rich and powerful here: If you follow Jesus’ example, you will gain your salvation. By sharing in the mournful “weeping” of the masses, you will be comforted (Matthew 5:4).
The First Temptation
The first temptation of Jesus by Satan to turn stones into bread is a temptation to abandon his kenotic mission to share in the depths of human suffering- in humanity’s hunger, thirst, poverty, insecurity, fragility, and precarity of life. Satan asked Jesus to use his power to exempt himself from human suffering. But Jesus chose not to use his divine power to free himself from human pain. Instead, he chose to be fully human and to suffer hunger in solidarity with humanity he was called to serve. As God incarnate, Jesus must share in “man’s weeping” (to use San Juan’s term) as his chosen lot. Jesus refused to give up these “jewels” of human tears, and “man’s weeping” in exchange for joy.
Jesus was tempted by Satan to use power solely for his own needs. But Jesus renounced the use of power for purely personal gain, as something to exploit. But note that in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus did not fully renounce power to produce bread, but he would only do so to feed the hungry masses (See Matthew 14: 13-20; 15:32-39)
- What would it mean for the powerful, rich and influential people, especially our political leaders, to follow Jesus’ example of using power, not for selfish reasons, but to feed the masses who hunger for food and justice?
The Second Temptation
The second temptation is a variation on the first. Satan, who knew his Bible well, quoted Scripture (Psalm 91:11-12), and tempted Jesus to abandon his solidarity with humanity and separate himself from humanity by the manifestation of supernatural and suprahuman power. Satan tempted Jesus to hurl himself from the top of the Temple and then have his angels come and rescue him. By doing so, he would show the people who would have witnessed such a grand spectacle that he was Son of God; and people might come to worship him. This temptation was also a temptation to pride.
Again, Jesus rejected the exercise of power for the sake of power. By refusing to “show off” his divine power, he remained in solidarity with ordinary humanity. He knew that the power he was called to show was not an extraordinary one to dazzle and impress; instead, the power he embraced was paradoxically one of weakness on the Cross, where he was condemned and executed by the State as a rebelde/manghihimagsik (rebel “King of the Jews”). Jesus did not renounce the use of power to save human life- but he would NOT save his own. On the Cross, Jesus did not save his life so that by his death, humanity might come to have life.
- Power has a divine purpose or end (telos)- as a means to nourish and protect life, and to achieve justice and love. What would it mean for our political leaders to follow Jesus’ example of using power in the work of justice and peace?
The Third Temptation
Satan tempted Jesus to desire the possessio of earthly kingdoms instead of the Kingdom of God that he was called to proclaim. The temptation is to “divert the proclamation of God’s kingdom so that it will be a kingdom according to the standards of this world.”5 The temptation is was Jesus to distance himself from the will of God and his Reign.
In his attack on the injustice of Imperial (Christian) Rome in his work, On the City of God, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) says that there are two cities: civitas terrena, the earthly city and civitas Dei, the City of God. The former is founded on self-love (amor sui), violence, oppression and unbridled desire and greed. In this earthly city, for example, its citizens possess libido habendi pecuniam (the inordinate love of money) that leads to libido dominandi (the love of unbridled power, domination and oppression). The City of God, on the other hand, is founded on the love of God alone (amor Dei), a love in which the glory of God is paramount, not the love of self. In Augustinian terms, Satan was tempting Jesus to transfer his allegiance from the City of God to the earthly city.
- In the Philippines, are we trying to “approximate” the City of God? What are we to make of the grinding poverty, the social inequality, the repeated violations of human freedoms and human rights, the red-tagging, the rampant extrajudicial killings, or unabashed selling out of our national patrimony to foreign powers/capital? Aren’t these all marks of an ungodly “earthly city” founded on the love of self, of wealth, of domination, of power and of violence. What are we Christians called to do?
In this third temptation, Satan also tempted Jesus to abandon God altogether and worship him. Like the other temptations, it was not only a temptation to betray God, but also to betray Jesus’ deepest true self by severing himself from that which gave his self its authenticity and deepest meaning, purpose and power- God.
Jesus resisted Satan precisely because it would mean cutting himself from God and from his true self.
- San Juan de la Cruz once said, “God cannot fit in an occupied heart.” If our hearts are full of things that are not God and of God, there won’t be space for God to inhabit us. What things are in our hearts that evict God from it? What things are in our hearts that prevent us from truly living into our “truest self”? Unless we cleanse our hearts of inordinate love of money and material things, of hatred, violence and greed, peace and justice will elude us, and our nation. Our work for exterior liberation must be accompanied by interior liberation.
1 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, 1961, 60.
2 ibid., 34-35
3 ibid., 31.
4 “Romances” in Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1991, 68.
5 Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, CT: Yale University Press, 1997, 177.
BalikTanaw Sunday Gospel Reflection 