Of course, we have
since come a long way but in 1982, an advert for the cutting-edge
Scottish-produced Sinclair ZX81 computer touted: "Finally, you can satisfy
your lust for power". As someone suggested, while you are at it, you might
as well throw in money. In fact, all our advertisements run along the triple
strands of sex, power and wealth.
If lust is a hunger,
then the pivotal premise for desire to make sense is its satisfaction.
Otherwise it would remain an itch, if not an irritation. What is essential to
this enterprise of satisfying the craving for pleasure, wealth and power is the
emancipation of choice as exemplified by a music video of the cast of the
series Empire. Check out the catchy tunes "No doubt about it" where
it features Jussie Smollet and Pitbull singing "You can do what you
wanna do. And do who you wanna do. Be who you wanna be. Freak who you wanna
freak".
In short, this
liberalisation consists of freeing the faculty of choosing from the anchor on
which it is built. In the first reading the anchor is prudence and it is
expressed in practical wisdom. The Collect voices this insight as "[G]rant
that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in
such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure".
This practical wisdom does not work out of a vacuum. In fact, it is relational
as declared by the Psalmist: "Lord, how I love your law".
This means that God's will must take precedence over my desire. Regrettably,
our faculty of choosing has been tainted by sin and concupiscence. We have
turned in on ourselves and to embrace God's will has become a struggle. We are
that self-focused that it does not take much for us to pass off our
proclivities as God's will.
God's will is found in
both nature and through the Church. Nature because man has a nature and there
he is subject to natural laws. The rage that we have today is that nature is
not of creation but rather a construct. An example suffices here. The rampant
development projects that we see taking place around us is less progress than
the articulation of the unspoken assumption that powers these drives and it is
that "nature should obey us" because we have the wherewithal to make
it what we want it to be.
God's will is found
through the Church because he who hears my voice listens to me meaning that
Christ through the Holy Spirit speaks through His Church. Here again, we tend
to idolise the maverick believing that the Holy Spirit cannot be tied down by
an institution which is characterised by a censorious legalism and smacks of
pharisaism.
The Muslims have got
one thing right, a feature in their practice which we used to have. This
struggle of sin and concupiscence is definitely made more complicated because
we have forgotten the education of our disordered nature. Prudence is
strengthened by the taming of our senses. Fasting is a discipline of moulding
the will because often enough what we want is in conflict with what the Lord
desires. Thus, shaping of our conscience according to the love of Christ and
His Church is helped by a will docile to the prompting of the Spirit.
The three traditional
vows of religion--chastity, poverty and obedience even though they are often
conceived of as renunciation, they are in actual fact, a mode of living whereby
one enters into mystery of Christ through the total gift of the self. There is
a vacuum created by God for which the human faculty of desire is an instrument
to its fulfilment. As St Augustine says, "Lord our hearts are restless
until they rest in you". Due to humanity's vitiated nature, this desire
often takes us far from God. Therefore, mere renunciation is not enough to take
us back to God. Instead, denial is only the first step in the re-education of
our faculty of choosing.
Choosing Christ always
has a cost and it is discipleship. We do not just make a choice once and for
all and not think about it anymore. We affirm our decision for Him each time we
choose. Recall the simple annual ritual of renewing our baptismal vows at
Easter and each time we participate in a baptism, there is also the act of
reaffirming our vows to choose God and reject satan. Furthermore, marriage
promises are not made only at the altar. It is revitalised every day in the
living out of one's marital fidelity. The same too goes for when we recite the
Creed every Sunday. It might sound like a little dead ritual but it is simply
one of many acts of renewing our faith and making a commitment to God.
Last week I made a
reference to Hell in the sense that Heaven and Hell are not dualities created
by God. Hell is the absence of Heaven and not the other way around because
Heaven cannot be defined by something that does not exist objectively. Even
though it is not mentioned in today's Gospel, the final stamp to all our
choosing is whether we have wisely chosen heaven or whether by our own fault we
have foolishly lost Heaven which therefore means that we have by our choice
consigned ourselves to Hell. The discipleship of choosing God is not splashed
out in the spectacular. Wisdom is not a flash of inspiration. Instead, if life
is markedly ordinary 99% of the time, we can be sure that God's will is to be
found in the humdrum of everyday living. It is in daily discipleship that one
gains the wisdom of knowing how to use the good things that pass in such a way
as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure.
