1st Sunday of Lent C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2013

Did you notice how the Pope announced his resignation? "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.  Well aware of the seriousness of this act, with complete freedom, I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, successor of St Peter."

I wonder what were the temptations he experienced in the process of reaching his decision.

Luke's [and Matthew's] description of Jesus' temptations can have the effect of our seeing them as pretty unreal.  Let us look at them more closely.

The first temptation showed Jesus feeling the pressure, fed by his hunger, to take the comfortable option to turn stones into bread, thereby using the miraculous power he suspected he had, not for the purpose of giving concrete expression to God's Kingdom, but simply to satisfy himself and make himself the centre of his world.

The second temptation may have been felt as the impatient, desperate, attraction of manipulation, or straight-out power, to control people's actions and to ensure their conformity, in preference to the slow, uncertain and often ineffective summons to true personal conversion. [This has been more a temptation for the later Church than for Jesus – though some in the crowds tried to force him, at least on one occasion, to become the powerful King/Messiah they wanted.]

As regards the third temptation, what was the difference, when all is said and done, between descending gently from the lofty pinnacle of the Temple to the cheers of a marvelling crowd below, and walking on water towards his frightened disciples?  What to do? And, more importantly, why?

The Gospel account gathered Jesus' temptations together  into the one handy package, and presented them immediately before Jesus began his ministry.  This can have the effect of unseating them altogether from the always changing, and sometimes confusing, circumstances of his unfolding ministry, with its ongoing encounters with crowds and disciples, and with religious and secular authorities - and their varying responses.

As his life unfolded unexpectedly, how did Jesus decide just what to do, and how to choose - in practice? Certainly he remained always open to his Father's Will.  But the issue for him, as it is for us, was: How do we tune in to God's Will?

"Love your neighbour as yourself" is non-negotiable as a guiding principle, but what does loving involve in the encounters and situations that fill every day? Life is a constant stream of practical, on-the-spot, decisions.  We don't have the time often to think much about them.  Our virtues [or lack of them] handle the ordinary, repetitious stuff.  But from time to time, other issues arise that we need to think about more carefully.

This is where temptations arise.  They come as the pressures or attractions that we feel to act against what we know we are really on about, who we really are; and to compromise our truer selves, our deeper integrity.

Listen again to how Pope Benedict put it: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry."

It is conscience that gives the sense of how to choose, of what to do, right here and now.  It can be sensed in the peace and inner harmony that we feel [the certainty that Benedict came to] when something sits right with us, with the deeper us [deeper than the surface likes and dislikes], and with what we value as really important.

Pope Benedict mentioned that he examined his conscience before God.  To know the Will of God we need to be regularly trying to tune in to God.  This is so important - because God's will for us is always and only a will for life.  In learning to discern God's Will, "before God", we draw also on a number of different sources: what we have been taught about what is right and wrong, the sense we have been able to make of it, and the values that we see behind it; the convictions that have been forged through life experiences; the people who have impressed us… The list goes on.

To live means to choose.  And to choose is to be tempted.  Jesus has gone that way before us.