FIRST (1ST) SUNDAY OF LENT A (Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Psalm 51:3-6; 12-14,17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11). Like Adam and Eve, Jesus was tempted but unlike them he did not sin (Heb. 4:15) showing us that the sin isn’t in the temptation but in the fall. Like our fore parents too we have sinned but like unto Christ, the one man Jesus (the new Adam through the new Eve, Mary) we have been acquitted, for in him we are saved and justified. This does not preclude new temptations but victory through them all, as he gives us the example of how to overcome all our trials: you are in the world; you will have trials but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world (Jn. 16:33). In today’s readings, not only are we taken back to the very beginnings of our salvation, Adam from the soul (adama), but also to the source, epicentre and end, Jesus Christ, for as in Adam all fell/died so in Christ all are raised up/alive. Our salvation and spiritual destiny revolve around the story of the first man, Adam, and the new Adam, Jesus, implicated or convicted through one and acquitted through the other(1 Cor. 15:21-22; 45-59). Just as through Adam’s sinful disobedience and condemnation, we all share in sin and its consequence, death, so through Christ’s obedience, grace and forgiveness abound, with the attendant consequence, justification unto eternal life – the original plan of God for humanity. Divinely destined, God made Adam (man, humanity) from the clay of the ground/world he had created from nothing (ex nihilo) with his breath or spirit (ruah in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek), as the only creature called the son of God (Lk. 3:38) since he was created in his image (Gen. 1:26; 5:1-3) with glory, responsible care, lordship and dominion over other creatures to enjoy the goodies of his new free habitat or homeland (the Garden of Eden – place of pleasure and delight) and even the protection of angels (Ps. 8:6-8; 91:11-13). To perpetuate this destiny, God gave him the rules of engagement, top of which is not to eat of a certain tree in the middle of the garden. Will he live up to it? He was expected to obey God and live by every word that comes out of his mouth but instead he chose to live by other deceptive voices, pride and rebellion, to live not by bread alone, to put the Lord to the test. Tempted by the cunning serpent over food and appetite, Eve lured Adam into forgetting his God and things changed until the new Adam came to undo the sins of the past – he defeated the devil (serpent) where Adam failed. The New Adam overturns the devil’s trick and all its consequences. In place of disobedience and death due to Adam, his obedience brings life; for where sin abounded in the natural man, Adam, grace abounds through the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Adam left the garden, taking us with him, for which Christ went before us, to bring us out of the abode of sin and banishment. He came to say come home back to Eden your true home – the final battle will be in the Garden of Gethsemane, to bring Adam back to adama, to free us from self-alienation to a restored union with God by going to the place of banishment and depravity where we wallowed in sin, ignorance and shame to undo them all. At the end of his temptation, he sent the devil away shamefully, but he has never been happy as he not only returned to Jesus at an opportune time (Lk. 4:13) but continues to tempt us through the self and the threefold love of the world: the lust of the flesh (physical lust), lust of the eyes (greed or avarice) and the pride of life (self-pride) (1 Jn. 2:15-16). These threefold concupiscence played out in the case of Eve-Adam: The woman saw that the tree was good for food (physical lust), pleasing to the eyes (avarice), and desirable for gaining wisdom to be like God (pride). The penitential psalm of today (Ps. 51) shows David, a kind of new Adam by divine covenant (2Sam. 7:4-17; Ps. 89:28), who like him and Eve fell to the threefold concupiscence with Bathsheba even up to murdering Uriah to hide his sin and protect his pride (2 Sam 11) but repented (2Sam 12:13-16). His plea for a “clean heart” and a “new spirit” within him anticipates the divine cleansing of the Spirit through baptism in the New Covenant made possible for us only by Christ’s death (Acts 2:37-38). In baptism the spirit (ruah) with which Adam became a living being is breathed again on us. Thus Paul maintains that we are justified unto righteousness through baptism (Rom. 6:3-4) not just in the juridical sense of acquittal in the divine court but more in the ontological sense of an actual change in our nature – same way Adam changed our old nature. This is what gives our Lenten observances their efficacy, for on their own they are of no spiritual fruits except when united with and transformed by Christ. If our master was tempted, we can’t be exempt for a servant can only be as good as, but not greater than, his master (Jn. 15:20; 13:16; Mt. 10:24). We see again the same threefold lustful pattern of turning stones into bread (flesh) - remember Adam eating the forbidden fruit and Israels grumbling against Moses for bread; the beauty and riches of all the world (eyes) leading to false worship - remember the false worship of the Israelites in the desert (Ex. 32:4; Lev. 17:7); and throwing him down to test God or the misuse of divine power for self-glory (pride) – remember the Israelites having to put God to the test in the wilderness. But Paul argues that Christ not only defeated the devil through his death and resurrection but has also poured out inexhaustible redeeming grace upon us that marks us for a victory incomparable with the sins in the world around us, for greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world (Second Reading; 1Jn.4:4). We now see the traditional basis for the evangelical counsels of chastity (against flesh), poverty (against eyes) and obedience (against pride) in the religious life (Mt. 19:12, 21) and the aim of our Lenten prayer, dependence on God’s will (against pride), fasting (to mortify the flesh) and almsgiving (to control the eyes’ long- throated selfish desire for avarice and wealth). Our temptations could be understood in this light too: like Adam and Jesus we are also tempted; we fall when we doubt or forget God’s words or commands thus opening the door to sin (Gen. 4:7) and overcome when we live by his word. Jesus’ approach to his temptations encourages us that we too can succeed where Adam failed if we follow Jesus example. While the number three does not necessary imply that he had only three temptations, it points to the significance of three as completeness and their symbolism as summary of all our temptations: food/appetite, greed or craze for power, miracles or prestigious positions and the allurement of earthly things, prosperity and fame that eventually lead to false worship. Notably the temptations come after his baptism and 40 days and nights of fasting, at the beginning of his public ministry – ours come following our baptismal public denunciation of the devil and beginning of our 40 days of Lent that points to the victory of his death and resurrection at Easter. Forty days recalls various periods of preparation in the Old Testament: Moses’ fasts on Mt. Zion at the giving of the Law (Ex. 34:28), the Israelites spying on the Promised Land (Num. 13:25), the years the Israelites wandering in the wilderness (Num. 14:34), etc., such that Jesus’ temptations actually recapitulate those faced by Adam and Israel in the desert (CCC 538). Generally temptations persuade us to deny the plan and supremacy of God or to overestimate ourselves, just as the tempter wanted Christ to redefine his messianic mission according to earthly standards, marked by bodily comfort or pleasure, self-glory or empty esteem, and earthly possession or power. Craftily and cunningly the devil tempts us mainly with what is appealing to us or what we ordinarily need or want, pretending to give us what he does not have power to, which unfortunately are never satisfying but only opens the door to more temptations, especially if we sell our birthright or lose our divine identity for a mere pot of porridge (Gen. 25:29-34). At the end he leaves us totally cajoled, dejected, naked and empty, except we turn to Christ. Sin exposes our nakedness, the lower state of being associated with animals but Christ clothes and empowers us with the true knowledge of good and evil, of who we truly are (creatures) and who we are not (the Creator). Christ returns us to our true home and destiny (adama, Eden) such that even death unto the soil can no longer have power over us, for the Spirit that raised us Jesus from the dead will quicken our spirit, to restore the original spirit of Adam in us. What is important is not that we are tempted (it is certain) or the type of temptation but how we handled it – this is what Christ teaches us today for he is our remedy for sin and example of virtue and victory, revealed in the cross. Despite all devilish gimmicks, including quoting the scriptures (Ps. 91:11-12), Christ overcame by a greater knowledge and application of the scriptures to each temptation; we also overcome by the word of our testimony (Rev. 12:11). Jesus indeed takes all his quotations from Deuteronomy (8:3; 6:13; 6:16), the last book of the Torah given by Moses to the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land to show that he, the new Moses, the Lawgiver himself, fulfils the Law broken by Israel. The power in God’s word isn’t so much in carrying it, having it under your pillow as though a charm or even quoting it but in allowing it to guide and transform your life, for ignorance of the scripture is ignorance of Christ (St. Jerome) and the power thereof. We must guard against our appetite, love for food, drink or anything, craze for signs and wonders, fame and popularity, lust of the flesh and eyes, and prideful quest for possessions. While we may not avoid temptations, we can overcome them as Christ, who even had divine powers yet humbly submitted himself to them to identity with our human conditions and its sufferings, in accordance to the will of God and for our example. He avoided the seduction of power and its abuse, the temptation to rise as the newest star, worldly quest for power or fame, and invites us to avoid building our life’s plan without God in preference for more pragmatically urgent means, as though God is an illusion or appendage. He teaches us that our true identity isn’t measured by possessions, for we are God’s blessed children even in our emptiness – he had nothing yet he had everything. This empowers us to say, no matter what, “begone Satan.” As we begin this season of repentance, let us ask forgiveness for our past failings and ask for a new heart docile to the Spirit (Rom. 5:5; Hebrews 8:10). Though we may be tempted, our victory is assured for it comes from the one who was tempted and overcame, without sinning. Our guarantee is in the Eucharist, a foretaste of our final victory when we shall be fully restored to our eternal homeland, foreshadowed by Eden. Resist the devil and he will flee away (Jms. 4:7), cling to Christ and his word and you shall live – let the devil be gone. Begin this Lent with Jesus and he will lead you to victory over all your temptations. Happy Sunday.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 06:58:08 +0000
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