The Degradation of the Human Person

Everyone knows the story of David and Bathsheba. In a society that is inundated with sex, we tend to overlook the horror of this epic story. When David was consumed with lust, Bathsheba ceased to be a woman, the handiwork of God and became an object to be possessed and used.

Unlike David, we do not have to climb to the roof of our palaces, we only have to turn on our computers. Lust, fed by pornography, hardens the heart and entices us to live out our fantasies, wherein people become things to be used, abused and disposed of. Society’s focus on pleasure and instant gratification has done horrible things to women.

The Holy Spirit moved the pen of the Sacred Author to record this event in David’s life. We must trust in the Spirit to speak to our hearts and enable us to value the beauty of the human person. By God’s merciful grace, we will receive the helps we need to overcome self-indulgence and pour ourselves out in service to others. By the guidance of the Spirit, we will learn to treat other with dignity and respect. By the outpouring of grace, we will rediscover what it means to say that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Once again, we will come to know the bliss that comes from walking with God in the Garden of His delight.

Lust not only caused David to treat Bathsheba as an object, but it also caused him to think that Uriah was expendable – disposable. Once we desecrate the temple of our body, nothing is sacred, nothing has value. When David fell prey to his lust, he did not see the image and likeness of God in either Bathsheba or Uriah. Sin hardened his heart and caused him to degrade the woman and to destroy her husband. His stone cold heart had to be made flesh again.

God so loved the world that He set in motion a process whereby the children of Adam and Eve might become human again. God became flesh so that sinful human beings might once again be made in the image and likeness of God. The Beloved Son, Who reflects the glory of the Godhead, was degraded and ridiculed so as to restore dignity to a fallen race. The immortal God died on the cross to bring mortal men to the fullness of life. I pray that each of us would experience God’s mercy and forgiveness so that we would stop hurting ourselves and others.

--Father Jerome Machar, OSCO

Satan's Three Temptations

The devil wants to take the things of God, the holy things, the things we love and he wants to twist them to his own desires. Satan wants to do is to take something that is good and true and twist it. The devil can’t do anything of himself. He can’t create anything of his own accord. He can only take what God has created and try to twist it to his own ends. We need to recognize satan’s plans for what they are.

Consider the temptation of Jesus in the desert. It mirrors the problems that we face right from the moment of our conversion. Jesus is tempted in the desert, a place that is the antithesis of the Garden of Eden. The opposite. The garden was a place which God prepared for man. Everything was there. Adam and Eve had everything they needed. They wanted for nothing. They had no hunger. They had no need of anything else in the world. They themselves were the king and queen of their castle. The Lord gave dominion of all things in the world to them. They had it all.

Contrast that with Jesus in the desert. Jesus goes into the desert, into the place where there is nothing. He goes into the place where there is no food. There is no water. There is the very privatization of all of those things. He goes into the very heart of human need. His experience is ultimately the punishment that was due to sin—the lacking of all the blessings that God wanted to give us. There, in the desert, he took on satan, not in the midst of having everything, but rather in the deprivation. 

So often that is how the devil comes to us. The devil comes to us when we are weak. This beautiful line of the Gospel, “He had nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry,” makes us realize that God was hungry. God felt the needs that we feel. It always gives me such great help to know that our Lord was hungry. Why? Because it means that God knows what we are going through. He knows our sufferings. He experienced them.

The way the devil tempted Adam and Eve is the same way that he tempted Jesus. What was it that drew Eve to the tree? It was the apple, wasn’t it? “Oh, it looks good. Look at this apple.” The temptation to food, that temptation to a carnal desire, our basic desires for food, for rest, for sensuality--those basic desires, those things that we have in common even with the irrational animals of the world--those very basic desires are where the devil first will tempt us. Getting us to sin in a carnal desire offers a toehold to satan. Satan goes after those carnal desires first. Why? Because it can get his foot in the door.

Once he gets your attention, what’s next? He tempts with pride. Satan tells Adam and Eve, “You can become like God. You can decide what’s right and wrong.” Isn’t that what he did when he tempted Jesus in the desert? Make the stones bread. That was a carnal desire. Then he showed Jesus all the cities of the world. “I give them to you. You can be the master of the things in the world,” satan said to Christ.  After a test of hunger, after a temptation to our great carnal desires, satan tempts with pride. 

Lastly he throws at us our faith itself. Wasn’t that the temptation that Adam and Eve faced? They were tempted to believe satan instead of God who told them not to eat of the fruit of that tree or they would die. Satan told them God was mistaken. “You won’t die.” They believed the lie because their faith in God had wavered. The devil told Jesus, “Worship me. Make me your God.” He was tempting Jesus to give up faith in the Father and put his faith in satan.

Jesus said that there are some demons they can’t be cast out except by prayer and fasting. Fasting must be part of our lives, because if we don’t conquer our very basic carnal desires, then we will never be able to resist the temptations of satan. Jesus showed us that fasting is the way to do battle with our carnal nature. Those carnal desires for food, rest, and sensuality are where the devil gets himself in the door. We need to shut the door strongly. 

This is why we need to fast more. We need to make a place for fasting in our lives. Although penitents in the Confraternity of Penitents fast frequently because it is part of their Rule of Life, the Catholic Church mandates only two days where we have to fast--Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. If that is all you are fasting, I challenge you to fast more this Lent. Maybe even once a week.

Pick a fast day. I’m not talking about starving yourself. One big meal, two smaller meals that, together, don’t equal the big one. No starving. But we do need to fast. 

We need to feel that hunger. We need to feel the hunger that Jesus felt in the desert because we need to rely more on God. Until we feel that hunger and we say, “I choose the love of God, over my own base desires,” until we choose the love of God over our own wants and needs, we are never going to be able to expel the devil and his temptations from our lives. 

We need fasting because we all have demons in our lives that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. We will never be able to resist the temptations to pride and to lack of faith if we don’t first control our appetites. The saying, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” isn’t just for men. The way to damage your heart is, indeed, through your stomach, through your carnal desires. The way to have Christ reign over you is to first control the carnal desires. 

I invite you to one day of fasting per week during Lent. One day a week and watch the graces flow into your life. 

--Father Jacob Meyer, CFP Visitor

Recognizing God

     The next sabbath almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy; and blaspheming, they contradicted what was spoken by Paul. Then both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken first to you. Since you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
“I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles,
   so that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.” ’ (Acts 13: 44-47)

If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’ (John 14:7)

Today's readings present us with an interesting problem. The God of the universe desires to make His presence known and experienced by people who keep putting their fingers in their ears, making it impossible for them to hear Him. They keep closing their eyes, making it impossible for them to see Him. Throughout the texts of Revealed Salvation History, God has attempted to overcome the handicaps and surmount the barriers of His Chosen People. The Holy One made use of signs and wonders and eloquent prophets. Despite His dauntless efforts, the people refused to hear the voice of God and did not recognize His Presence among them. The Sacred Scriptures recount how the descendants of Adam and Eve had not walked in company with God; had not cared for one another; had not acted as if they were created in the image and likeness of God.

They looked at the beauty and grandeur of creation and did not acknowledge their Creator. They forgot that they were created to tend creation in company with God Who is the source and summit of all that exists. Rather than tending the garden entrusted to them, they abused it and its resources for their own sordid purposes. To refresh our own memories, it might be helpful to ponder these few lines taken from the second chapter of the Book of Genesis.  "Such is the story of the heavens and the earth at their creation. At the time when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens-- while as yet there was no field shrub on earth and no grass of the field had sprouted, for the Lord God had sent no rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the ground-- the Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being" (Gen. 2: 4-7). We were made to possess the breath of the Spirit and to reflect the grandeur of God.

Even though we cannot see God, He sees us. No matter how intently man looked at the wonders of creation. he failed to recognize the hand of its Creator. God seeks us out even before we can identify the object of our deepest longing. Because He desired to be found, the Master of the Universe chose to become a man and dwelt among us. He took to himself our infirmities and once again breathed upon us His life-creating Spirit. By rising from the dead, He transformed our sin-hardened hearts into hearts of flesh that could love and show compassion. The glory of God shined on the face of Christ. Through His Passion, Death and Resurrection, Christ manifested the Father's love for the human race and made all who believed in Him heirs of the Kingdom. Let us entrust ourselves to the love and will of God and thus come to know the blessings of a life hidden with Christ, in God. When Christ our life appears, may we appear with Him in glory.

Father Jerome Machar, OSCO