Readings: Gen 2.7 to 9, 3.1 to 7 / Ps 50 / Rom 5.12-19 / 4.1 to 11 Mt
TRUST
Lent has begun. Once again the Church is allowed a period of withdrawal, imitating the Lord that after his baptism he spent a time of meditation to decide what kind of Messiah become. In the desert, God made flesh has faced all the temptations that seek to confuse the simplicity in the human heart. Similarly we also, in the days of Lent, we try to get into the depths of our hearts, hungry to see what lives there, to decide what kind of men, women, we want to be disciples.
Doubts
The first reading of Genesis is a tale of rare wisdom and literary beauty. In the original narrative recounts the failure experienced by the man, revealing how evil it is capable of entering into his freedom. Man became "living being" (Gen. 2:7) and placed by God in the enchantment of the garden of life, the snake had addressed a question - the first that the sacred history records - tendentious: "It is true that God has said: "You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?" (Gen 3:1). The trouble with this question is not the activation of critical consciousness about things, the ability to interrogate and question the man you need to enter into a genuine relationship with things and with others. It is rather a perversion of the limit, it suddenly becomes obvious and uncomfortable to the human eye, to circumvent a negative reality as soon as possible. For God did not offer the man a limit as a constraint to live, but useful as a place for man to receive the gift of life, which is structurally based on the report and not on self. The snake raises the suspicion that things are not so, and that the prohibitions contained in God want to limit the educala human life rather than to grow, "will not die! God knows that the day when you eat would open your eyes and you'd be like God, knowing good and evil "(3.4 to 5). And "so everyone has spread death, since all have sinned" (Romans 5:12). Each of us lives on and updates the account of creation, every time he begins to look with suspicion that a limit needs to be accepted and addressed. It jumps the fence, finding himself in his hands the intractable reality of freedom gone wild. That freedom that today we've got a large quantity, but we no longer know how to use, that makes us lose time in fragmented experiences tasteless, which makes us like rivers without a bed, which is continually lost in a thousand useless streams of water.
Consequences
Narrating the experience of Jesus in the desert, the Gospel presents the three fundamental temptations which make up the original one described in Genesis. The first is the tyranny of satisfaction: "If you are the Son of God, 'that these stones become bread" (Matt. 4:4). How often we spend a lot of energy to meet the compensation for which we seem to have an absolute need, bending reality to others and our service. Fortunately, "do not live by bread alone man" (4:4), Jesus says to the devil. We do not live only in satisfaction, there is much else in life: a mission, a word that God has written in the depths of our soul to put into practice. We do not live only for "self" - as Saint Paul says (2 Cor 5:15) - but "by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (4.4), ensures the Lord Jesus The second is the temptation to success easy, of rapid growth. The devil offers to the Maestro to become a miraculous Messiah, able to immediately reach the best results. It is the lure of an easy and effective, much in vogue today. It is the way of continuous feedback, the immediate responses of the live television film, devoid of basic human experiences: the expectation, failure, illness and death. It is true that we should have results right away, God should not be put "on trial" (4:7), Jesus says life is built slowly, with the same patience that God has and gives. The last temptation is the most devious and dangerous possession as an antidote to the precariousness of life. But something must have sold his soul, bend your knees. The devil says to Jesus: "All these things will I give thee if, falling at my feet and worship me" (4.9). Possession is a illusory happiness, because it expropriated from ourselves and then introduces us anxiety. It is only an illusion of well-being, which builds on our radical poverty, which, however, can become the place to experience a serene dependence on God and brothers.
Solution
"Go away, Satan!" He says dryly Lord Jesus to the last temptation, quoting Scripture: "The Lord your God in worship: worship Him alone "(4:10). There are some questions that ultimately can not be solved except by the strength of a dry imperative. Not that full of arrogance that usually reserved for others - to tell him what to do - but one full of humility and meekness that talking to ourselves - to tell us what we should not do. The challenge of Lent calls to awaken in us the desire to face life as a fight to stay in. "joyful and exciting adventure of a disciple" (Benedict XVI, Message for Lent 2011 ). The forty days of Lent is an opportunity to work on ourselves with a little 'more lucid than usual. Or rather, to allow the grace of God to mold us better. Our share of responsibility is small and precise: to provide more space for prayer, want to return to the things that are worth crying for our sins, the evil in the world do not meet the usual appetites, until you discover to be inhabited by a hunger for deeper, desire to do good, to build the kingdom of God, reach out and use a bit of generosity 'of our time and our property because someone is a little' less poor and to feel less alone. Above all, seriously try to heal the virus of suspicion, nourished by the word of God, which gives us confidence in the Father, full of mercy and tenderness. If we do so, while we change ourselves, God will also give a hand to change the world, uniting to "work right" (Rom 5:18) of His Son, the "gift of grace" poured "in abundance on all" (5:15), "who gives life" (5:18) to those who seek and those who he lost.
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