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.
