*****
While Jesus was preparing to begin his public ministry - to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God, to be the kind of Messiah envisioned by His Father and to open up his mind and heart to the power and promise of the Holy Spirit - he was tempted.
Jesus was tempted to turn stone into bread. Jesus was tempted with all the power and glory of earthly kingdoms. Jesus was tempted to throw himself from the temple: presumably, to convince people of his identity and authority.
What is the fundamental temptation here? Jesus was tempted to be someone other than who God wanted him to be. Jesus was tempted to be a different kind of savior. Jesus was tempted to believe that there was an easier way to redeem, to save, to sanctify. Jesus was tempted to believe that there was a shortcut to salvation.
We can relate to this temptation. How often do we tell ourselves that we would be happier, healthier and holier if we were someone else? How often do we say that there must be another way (read, an easier way, a shortcut) to be a good wife, a good husband, a good son or daughter, a good sister or brother, a good friend or neighbor? The tragedy is that if we spend our lives believing that we'd be better off if we were someone or somewhere else, we never live the one life - the only life - that God gives us. Francis de Sales writes:
“Don't sow your desires in someone else's garden; just cultivate your own as best you can. Don't long to be someone other than what you are; rather, desire to thoroughly be who you are. Direct your thoughts to being very good at that and to bear the crosses, little or great, that you find there. Believe me, this is the most important point - and the least understood - in the spiritual life.” (Letters of Spiritual Direction, p. 112)
Jesus was tempted to be someone and be somehow other than who he was. Jesus was tempted to forsake the authentic pathway of love for the hollow, devilish promise of a shortcut. Jesus was tempted to take the (seemingly) easy way out. However, his belief in God's plan for him allowed Jesus to disavow the empty promise of a quick fix for the path that leads to true happiness, health and holiness.
As we journey through yet another season of Lent, let us ask for the courage we need to recognize the voice of the tempter in us. Ask for the insight to see the ways in which you are tempted to spend your life wishing you were someone else. Ask for the grace and the strength to follow the example of Christ.
Be who you are and be that well.
*****
“You shall not…”
Today’s first reading from the Book of Leviticus makes it quite clear: if you want to be holy as the Lord is holy there are many things that God expects us to avoid. The things on the “do not do” list includes:
• Stealing
• Lying
• Slandering
• Defrauding
• Cursing
• Hating
• Taking revenge
• Holding grudges
• Spreading slander
• Being unjust
• Being idle
• Causing others to stumble while enjoying success in avoiding these vices may be noteworthy, there is more to life than merely refraining from doing bad; there is also the matter of actually doing good! On the topic of how to resist temptations to do wrong, Francis de Sales wrote:
“Despise these assaults and do not deign even to think about what they propose. Let them buzz around your ears as much as they like and flit around you on every side like flies. When they try to sting you and you see that they somehow light on your heart, be content with quietly removing them. Don’t do this by struggling or disputing with the temptations but by performing some actions of a contrary virtue, especially acts of love of God…This is the best way to overcome the enemy in small as well as in great temptations…” (IDL, Part IV, Chapter 49, p. 249)
So, in the Salesian tradition, rather than focus on how to avoid the “do not do” list, we’d be better off pursuing the “to do” list:
• Be generous
• Be honest
• Bless
• Love
• Forgive
• Let go
• Circulate truth
• Act justly
• Get busy
• Hold up others In other words, what better way to “shall not” than to “shall do?"
*****
“When the time comes to present ourselves before His divine Goodness to speak to Him face to face, which is what we call prayer, simply the presence of our spirit before His and His before ours forms prayer whether or not we have fine thoughts or feelings…He is touched with the prayer of a soul so simple, humble and surrendered to His will.” (LSD, pp. 84 – 85)
Prayer isn’t always about saying a lot to God or doing a lot for God. Sometimes, prayer is simply about being…with God.
*****
“There is something greater here…”
In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales wrote:
“‘Woe to you, Corozain! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had have long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes.’ Such is the word of Our Savior. Hear the, I beg you, Theotimus, how the inhabitants of Corozain and Bethsaida, instructed in the true religion, and having received favors so great that they would effectually have converted the pagans themselves, remained nevertheless obstinate, and never wished to avail themselves of those favors, and by an unparalleled rebellion rejected that holy light. In truth, ‘at the day of judgment the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba will rise up against the Jews, and will convict them as worthy of damnation: because, as to the Ninevites, though idolaters and barbarians, at the voice of Jonas they were converted and did penance; and as to the Queen of Sheba, she, though engaged in the affairs of a kingdom, yet having heard the renown of Solomon's wisdom, forsook all, to go and hear him. Yet the Jews, hearing with their own ears the heavenly wisdom of the true Solomon, the Savior of the world; seeing with their own eyes his miracles; touching with their own hands his virtues and benefits; they did not cease to harden their hearts and to resist the grace which was so freely and powerfully offered to them. See then again, Theotimus, how they who had less attractions are brought to penance, and those who had more remain obdurate: those who have less occasion to come, come to the school of wisdom, and those who have more, stay in their folly…” (TLG, Book II, Chapter 10, pp. 126 – 127)
Why is it that the people you would least expect to are the ones who ‘get it’ when it comes to the love of God? They may not be very sophisticated – they might be slow to see the big picture – yet their hearts are touched and changed by their realization of the enormity of God’s love for them. They open their hearts to their own delight!
By contrast, why it is that the people who should know better are frequently enough the very ones who don’t "get it?" They might be very wise – they may have a lot going for them – and still they never manage to allow the love of God to get through to them. They harden their hearts at their own peril.
In the midst of our day-to-day lives there is, indeed, “something greater here.” Do we get it or not?
*****
“Ask and it will be given to you…”
In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales wrote:
“If a man prays to God and perceives that he is praying, he is not perfectly attentive to his prayer. He diverts his attention from God to whom he prays in order to think of the prayer by which he prays. A man in fervent prayer does not know whether he prays or not, for he does not think of the prayer he makes but of God to whom he makes it.” (TLG, Part IX, Chapter 10, p. 122)
If Jesus invites us to ask for things in prayer, who are we to refuse him? However, we need to be open to the fact that God may not always give us what we want in ways that we want. God indeed answers our prayers, but not always in ways to our liking.
For his part, St. Francis de Sales asks us for something. When it comes to prayer, he asks us to be less concerned about the things for which we ask and more focused upon the person to whom we bring our requests. After all, what could be better than any one thing that God might give us when compared with what God has already given us in the person of His Son?
Himself!
*****
“If the wicked, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins that he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die…”
In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales observed:
“Our Savior’s redemption touches our miseries and makes them more beneficial and worthy of love than original innocence could ever have been. The angels, says our Savior, have ‘more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just that have no need for repentance.’ So, too, the state of redemption is a hundred times better than that of innocence. Truly, by the watering of our Savior’s blood, made with the hyssop of the cross, we have been restored to a white incomparably better than that possessed by the snows of innocence. Like Naaman, we come out of the stream of salvation purer and cleaner than if we had never had leprosy. This is to the end that God’s majesty, as he has ordained for us as well, should not be ‘overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good...' (TLG, Book II, Chapter 5, pp. 115 – 116)
This display of God’s generosity is nothing if not breathtaking. God loves us so much that not only does God not hold our sins against us if we should repent from our evil ways - but God also goes even further by applying His grace to our repentance in ways that can transform us into something more beautiful than if we had never committed sin in the first place! How generous is God? God can even turn our sins into a means of our salvation if we but trust in his unconditional and abiding love for us. But should this really surprise us? After all, have you ever noticed that some of the greatest of saints started out by being the greatest of sinners?
Are there any ways in which you are disfigured by the leprosy of sin? Don’t be ashamed. Rather, be assured that God can transform your spiritual disfigurement into something – actually, someone – far more beautiful than you could ever have believed possible.
And God will affect something of this transformation even today!
*****
"Be careful to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul..."
In his Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales wrote:
“Genuine, living devotion presupposes love of God, and hence it is simply true love of God. Yet it is not always love as such. Inasmuch as divine love adorns the soul it is called grace, which makes us pleasing to the Divine Majesty. Inasmuch as it strengthens us to do good, it is called charity. When it has reached a degree of perfection at which it not only makes us do good but also do this carefully, frequently and promptly, it is called devotion.” (IDL, Part III, Chapter 30, p. 206)
Indeed, “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord!”
Carefully, frequently and promptly!
