The Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent is always the story of the Temptation of Jesus. This story is included in the gospel not to show the human side of Jesus rather to teach us how to handle temptations in our life.
Temptation is real. It is all over. Every day we are bombarded with temptations. However, very seldom we are aware of them. Jesus discovered it when he was in the Desert. The Desert is a place of silence and solitude. When Jesus stood before God in silence, he discovered the different pushes and pulls that had the potentials to distract him from his mission.
First of all, to discover and deal with our temptations, we need a desert; a place of silence and time for silence. Since we are distracted with too many things, very often, we become aware of our temptations only when we become a victim of it. Try to find time and place for prayer and personal reflections during this lent. In His light we see our true self.
Secondly, the devil is not tempting us anymore with traditional weapons and materials. They upgraded and modernized its tactics. They trap us today in a very sophisticated way. First of all, they make our lives busy with too many attractive activities and programs. They present these things as vitally important and unavoidable. They convincingly present religion as a private enterprise and make us believe that God and religion can wait. They push God away from the center of our life and make it one among many. This attitude is called secularism.
When God is pushed away from the center of my life, then I become the center of my life. My primary concern becomes the glorification of my self and not of God. This is called individualism. How do we measure glory, greatness and success today? It is in terms of wealth and things that we possess/ have. As a result, the driving force of our life becomes the craving for wealth and everything associated with that. This is called materialism.
The truth is that we are never happy with what we have. Material things seldom give us fulfillment. They get outdated and out fashioned easily. Nothing seems permanent and stable. Evidently, we look for novelty. We try for the latest in the market. This is called consumerism.
The basic principle of consumerism is ‘be different and go for the latest brand’. Eventually consumerism, the ‘use and throw culture’ creep into human relationship and families. People give up relationships for silly reasons and go for new ones. Experimentation in human relationship breaks families and spread chaos in the society which is the ultimate goal of Devil.
In short, secularism leads to individualism, individualism leads to materialism, materialism leads to consumerism and consumerism leads to chaos. This is the way devil operates today!
The devil ensures our fall by pushing God away from the center. The effect may not be immediate though certain. The devil knows how to kill without shedding even a single drop of blood. Many of the world’s most attractive temptations are like some television commercials: frequently deceptive and frightfully costly (William Arthur Ward). Stay awake! Be alert!
Jesus survived the temptations by using the Scripture. Each time he was tempted with other priorities, the Word of God reminded him of God’s plan for him. The best way to recognize, resist and overcome temptation is to turn to the Scripture, Teachings of the Church and its Sacred Traditions.
Fr. Sebastian,
ReplyDeleteYour homily today was GREAT!! Thanks for posting this. I got to share it with my family.
See you soon!
Lisa Iwasaki :)
While you bring up many valid points, Father, I am a little taken aback by the implication that individuality is wrong because it takes us away from God. Perhaps it is the transcendentalist within me that protests.
ReplyDeleteDespite all arguments, we cannot deny that we are human and we should be proud of our individuality. I believe that rather than thinking of individualism as a sin, we should think of it as God's way of allowing us to express ourselves. Individualism does not always lead to the Devil's clutches, when one keeps in mind God's message as well as their own inherent feel for what is right and what is wrong.
Hi! Emerson,
ReplyDeleteI greatly appreciated your comment on ‘Individualism’. Thank you. I would like to share a few more thoughts on the same topic.
Christian theology and spirituality is based on the Trinitarian concept of God. God is a relationship. God is a communion of Three Persons, not three individuals. The term person is used deliberately as it denotes relationship and interdependence, where as the term individual denotes separation and independence. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are not functioning independently of one another but in perfect union with one another. There is unity of purpose and mission. Jesus said, for example, “ My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and finish his work” (Jn 4:34). “ Not my will, but yours be done” (Lk 22:42). “ However, they are not slave to each other. Father is not Son and Son is not the Holy Spirit. They have distinct individuality and freedom. The temptation story of Jesus underscore this principle (Mt 4:1-11). Jesus had the freedom to choose but he sacrificed his personal interest and submitted himself to the greater plan of his father. He found his highest goal not in self-expression but in self-sacrifice for the higher good of humanity (Mk 8:36).
Individualism holds that the individual is the primary unit of reality and the ultimate standard of value. It holds that every person is an end in himself and that no person should be sacrificed for the sake of another. They see people dealing primarily with reality; other people are just one aspect of reality.
Individualism hails:
• Need to defend oneself from others
• Absolutize personal standard and values.
• Needed mastery over environment (its for me)
• Great emphasis on privacy
• Encouraged individual differences
• Feeling of personal importance
• Ruggedness of character “ I can do whatever I want or necessary”
This leads to great competition; each person trying to best (beat) others. The emphasis is placed on individual conscience-decisions-accomplishments-rewards. As a consequence there is lessened loyalty to groups, traditions, associations, beliefs, church and God.
It does not mean that we are a collective entity. Every person is unique and precious before God (Ger 1.5). Every human person has been given talents and gifts. God demands accountability from every single person (Mt 25:29). We need to grow to the maximum of our potentials. God is glorified when we are fully alive.
But the question is what does growth means? If my personal growth alone is the ultimate goal of my talents and gifts, then there is a problem. Unfortunately this is the theory of individualism. Exclusivism and selective interdependence that results from extreme individualism is unproductive. As long as my self promotion is not at the expense of others, individualism is healthy.
God judges our achievements in terms of what we were to others. Beyond individual goals and objectives, every talent and gift has a corresponding social goal and objective. Growing together is more beautiful that growing alone as basically we are a social being. We are born from a union, we are born into a communion and we grow through a community.
Fr. Sebastian