Fr. Victor Baltazar, SJ
1st Sunday of Lent
February 18, 2018
To Pray on and Ponder: Mark 1, 13-15
Id quod volo (That which I most deeply desire): To look deeply into my heart and notice the core fear that is of the serpent’s subtle suggestion, namely “that God does not desire me to be like God.”
I don’t think that the serpent’s suggestion in Genesis 2 was really simply a matter of eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This may have some bearing too, for in the story, God did forbid Adam and Eve from eating that fruit. But for me the more serious of temptations that the serpent suggests is to make us believe that God would not like us to be like God, that though God has confirmed that we are part of that creation which he describes with delight as “everything is good,” simply, God still means to maintain our separation from him, keeping us from really coming close to his image and likeness, for we are simply weak and vulnerable creatures. In a sense it is a subtle suggestion that strikes our core and gives rise to all sorts of emptiness and fear that perhaps propel us to grab on any other creature that can promise to fill our lack, and assuage our fears of aloneness, of poverty, of vulnerability.
Beatrice Bruteau, a woman religious philosopher once wrote that the dynamic of sin begins with this fear and emptiness. We choose to fill our lives with creaturely attachments which promise to fill our hearts and save us from our fears. And when other people challenge us and mirror our attachments to us, we become even more defensive and grasping and grabbing because divestment from these attachments can feel like annihilation and death of our ego. It is when defensiveness hardens our attachments into real idols (aka., other gods) and when we begin to see our well being as dependent on these creatures that we actually turn away from God and succumb to sin and vice, which of course further erode our character. Like Adam and Eve we end up alienated from ourselves (notice that they hid in shame for they were naked); alienated from other persons (as with all the successive blaming that ensued after the fall), alienated from other creatures (the blaming and banning of the serpent and the cursing of the ground) and finally, alienated from God (they hid and didn’t want God to see them).
Consider then temptations our Lord faced in the desert, as summarily described to us in Gospel of Mark and you find the more usual stuff of temptation–things, power and renown, which the demon seems to suggest to Jesus to lure the latter to take on redemption of himself or others into his own hands: “Rely on bread rather than feed on God’s Word constantly and faithfully; show yourself important to God by falling from the temple parapet and having yourself rescued by God’s army of angels–what a show! and then, worship me (Satan) and receive power over the whole world!” St. Ignatius of Loyola, the master of discernment suggests that we notice the pattern of “Satan’s strategy” as it unfolds in our own lives: the evil one deceives–first its lures us into entrusting our lives in riches, then stirs in us a desire for honors, for prestige, for renown that this world ordinarily gives to its kind and finally, power and pride–a sense of declaring ourselves independent, capable of living by ourselves, of becoming so filled with pride that we look at our God glaringly and say: “I don’t need you!” Of course even if we are able to say these words with pride and bravado, we also know deep in ourselves that this statement of a bloated ego is founded on a big lie. Everything we have and hold is gift. All our riches and talents are gifts. Our capacity to feel, to reason, to choose, to love–all these are gifts. In fact our very life and breath are gifts.
And so St. Ignatius gives us the wise counsel–to fix our gaze on Jesus Christ, our Eternal Lord and King who offers us a different strategy, one that does not only counteract Satan’s strategy but also opens up a path of renewal for every disciple who wants to offer himself to our Lord. And if Satan’s strategy was riches–> honors–> pride. Christ’s on the other hand was to invite people into poverty–> humiliations–> humility. And these all translate into a humble entrustment and surrender of our lives before our Provident God, for we are creatures, we are servants, we are friends who are now adoptive children of God. Take note, children of God. God bless!