Friday 6 March 2020

1st Sunday of Lent Year A 2020

There is a market for happy-ending movies. Reason could be that we do not need reminders of how bad the situation is. Therefore, cinematic or literary happy endings are a form of escapism because reality is more than we can handle. A good example would be the political nightmare that appears to have gripped this country. This whole debacle that has kept many a-glued to their electronic screens has also spawn an array of comic relief posted on social media as such.
 
We appear to have imported this hunky-dory expectation into our religious experiences. Today, the Gospel injects a sobering shot of reality into this fanciful fairy-some world of ours. In our relationship with God, the initial sense of affirmation must give way to a period of probation or purification. Those preparing for baptism must take note that for a meaningful and genuine relationship to flourish, there has to be adversities and hardships to overcome.

The first Sunday of Lent is dedicated to this fundamental fact. Concerning our testings and trials, both the first reading and the Gospel call our attention to the truth that human existence goes beyond the physical and the material. We get a glimpse of mankind’s experience of the spiritual realm. Both the readings acknowledge the presence of Satan—a devious force that is manipulative and which tries hard to frustrate God’s plan.

You probably know what the word “Satan” in Hebrew means. It literally spells accuser. Satan resents the exalted place that man has in the eyes of God. On Ash Wednesday, we were reminded that man had been created from dust and to dust he shall return. In the presumptuous estimation of Satan, how could the Lord have fashioned something firstly from inconsequential dust and secondly ennoble it in His own image? How can God be foolishly generous to a creature that is inferior to the angels’ spiritual stature? Ever since the creation of man, Satan has set out to prove God wrong for moulding and gracing such an undeserving creature. Man can never be worthy of God’s love and friendship.

True enough, Adam fell through his misused of freedom. Therefore, Satan has stood as the accuser against God: “I had been right all along about man’s weakness and unfaithfulness. He is not worthy of your friendship and grace. Man will never be”.

Satan’s endeavour all along has been to remind God of His “mistake”; until the Incarnation. Man may have been unfaithful but God has proven Himself otherwise. He is faithful to the point that He readily came to us in the person of His Son: Jesus Christ. In Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, we have someone who embodies a faithfulness that is worthy of God’s friendship. Through His life, death and resurrection, He has paved the way again for man to be God’s friend. Indeed, when He had made man a little less than a god, He has never lost faith in him. That is the level of God’s friendship with humanity.

We hear this emphasised in the second reading. St Paul compared and contrasted Jesus with the first Adam. The first Adam failed whereas Christ, the second Adam, remained steadfast to God’s friendship enduring Satan’s attempts to lure Him into infidelity. Jesus’ friendship is the exemplar of trust in God rather than in Himself.

Every temptation we encounter is a derivative of the tests that Jesus underwent—pleasure, power and possession. The premise of Satan’s temptation is to make us forget our dependence on God. We are lured to trust in human and material realities. For example, a sizeable swathe of this country is in depression. We promote our culinary delights as a touristic highlight. Come and taste our cultural diversity but closer to truth we all could be just comfort eating. In other words, we are eating our depression. See, we have the semblance of modernity specifically in terms of governance—a parliamentary democracy—and yet our administration is nothing but feudal in essence—a feudalism very much dependent on patronage. This is an unspoken but tolerated arrangement. Ask yourself how much of “Datuk Datuk” you need to scrape to before you get a permit approved and how many brown envelopes have to go under the table? The point being our despair is actually a temptation to power. It does not seem so, right? In a feudal society, the serfs are powerless, so how can there be any temptation to power?

Precisely. We have come to believe that we have sole control of our destiny. We alone decide how to live, where to live and when to live. Euthanasia, once restricted to helping terminal patients die has now become “humanely” re-classified with a less threatening and more user-friendly term such as assisted-dying and it is on demand. The debate surrounding death’s destiny shows that ultimately human existence is self-willed and not God-willed. To be fair, we do have relative sway over our destiny because we are not automatons, robots or machines. But this power is relative in the sense that only God has the definitive say in our destiny.

So, when Jesus was tempted by Satan to throw Himself down in order to summon the angels, His response, “I shall not put God to the test” was an acknowledgement that His human existence is predicated on the will of God. It is true that despair or depression can be clinical. Some of us might need pink pills to perk ourselves up. But depression can also be spiritual in the sense that we despair that God is in control and that God can be trusted. If you like, our national depression has a spiritual pathology.

At the end of Mass, we all kneel and recite a prayer which sounds like a relic from an era long past. We beseech St Michael to assist us in this spiritual warfare. This prayer is not a reliquary of the past. It alerts us to the reality that Satan will do his utmost best to take us away from God’s love and friendship. He continues to tempt us into the vanity of unquestionable self-determination and at the same time, he lures us to believe that he does not exist. In a way, Satan has been successful. We still believe that we are in control. Of Satan we dare not blame him because technically, he does not exist.

The present pandemic is without doubt a test. To take precaution is an act of charity, whereas fear is not. Fear is giving in to the temptation that we alone can determine how long we live. The line between precaution and fear is thin. First, no Holy Water. Then, no more Holy Communion on the tongue. After that, no more imposition of ashes—just sprinkling on the crown. Soon to come, no more individual confession during the penitential services. But, we have hand-sanitiser. In hand-sanitiser we trust.

Tell me if what we are doing is taking precaution or acting out of fear?

Apart from this pandemic, there is also the political quagmire we are stuck in that threatens to drown us in despondency. Some have already stated that they will migrate. When trials come our way, instead of turning to God we run away from Him.

Tribulations could also be God’s invitation to double our prayer especially when we are most helpless. Not that we do not need Him when things are going well. In good times and in bad, our duty is to trust and be faithful to Him. But our natural instinct is to trust ourselves first and only turn to God when we have failed. The proper attitude, in all things, is to turn to God first because we have faith and trust in Him. So, to those going for Baptism this Easter, you are joining an enterprise founded on fidelity and confidence. Learn this truth so that you can prepare yourself for the testing that is sure to come. The rest of us, instead of panicking about the Covid-19 pandemic or mourning about the hopeless predicament of our political morass, come this Friday evening for the 24-hour adoration. We have not prayed enough or make sacrifices enough for the country. The Graeco-Roman world may teach us something about this temptation to “personal” power. They called it Deus ex machina. It is a theatrical or literary device introduce into a desperate situation for the purpose of resolving a conflict and to procure an acceptable outcome; like the Great Eagles in the movie Lord of the Rings coming to the rescue most unexpectedly. Wittingly or unwittingly, the Graeco-Roman have expressed a theological truth which today’s temptations of Christ is teaching us: Only God can be trusted. No matter how hopeless, believe so that He can save us.