Grace transforming temptation

     The two acts in the drama of human salvation history are represented in the scripture readings of the Eucharistic celebration for this first Sunday of Lent. The first act, described in the first reading from the Book of Genesis, is about the failure of Eve and Adam, seduced by the devil’s temptation. The second, portrayed in the Gospel, relates how after his baptism and being led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where though weakened by fasting for forty days and nights, Jesus overcame and thwarted the devil in presenting three insidious temptations. Both these acts are summarized in the second reading taken from St Paul, who contrasts the ‘first Adam’ with the ‘second Adam’ (Christ).

     This drama is beautifully described in Blessed John Henry Newman’s memorable hymn, Praise to the Holiest in the height:

                                   O loving wisdom of our God!
                                   when all was sin and shame,
                                   a second Adam to the fight
                                   and to the rescue came.
                                   O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
                                   which did in Adam fail,
                                   should strive afresh against the foe,
                                   should strive, and should prevail.

     The illustration above is that of the last of Jesus’ three temptations, depicted in Sandro Botticelli’s fresco on the opposite wall to the same artist’s painting of the Trials of Moses in the Sistine Chapel. Thousands of people visit this UNESCO world heritage site, named after the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV, who in 1477 ordered the rebuilding and decoration of the former Capella Magna. They cannot but be moved by the sheer beauty surrounding them in this environment of grace.

The atmosphere of grace, hope and love

In the light of faith ultimately, as Dostoevsky put it, “beauty will save the world.” This most deeply means that the grace of Christ will triumph despite a situation of myriad allurements leading people to forsake the real beauty of the art of living. The logic of sin really consists in living ungraciously. There is nothing original about sin, however, since everyone continues in the inherited and habitual tendency of doing what they have seen others do! – Così fan tutte, which is the theme of Mozart comic opera that ridicules human fickleness, that he presents typified by women. – But how innovative and unoriginal sin is! Yet, we, like all people, haven’t learnt to shake ourselves free of this ingrained yoke of misery. In other words, we continue preferring selfishly to grasp God’s gifts, rather than praise and thank him, their gracious “Giver of Breath and Bread” (in G.M. Hopkins’ lovely phrase).

     In the first volume of his great trilogy, Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict when discussing Jesus’ temptation hit the nail on the head in saying “God is the issue” (p.29). He pointed to the common human tendency to go after what we regard as ‘real’ in what’s there immediately before us – bread, money, power – instead of seeking and persevering in pursuing what is of ultimate importance: acknowledging, being grateful for Christ coming to relate us to God.

     Notoriously we are deceived, however, by what we think are good intentions. The saying is true: the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Furthermore, even in seeking to do all things for God’s glory – as expressed by the Ignatian axiom, Ad majorem Dei Gloriam – it may happen that we’re really acting out of vain glory or secretly priding ourselves for our purity of intention. The poet T.S. Eliot has Thomas à Becket on the eve of his martyrdom express his realisation of the greatest of all kinds of temptation:

             Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
             Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
             The last temptation is the greatest treason:
             To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

     The Christian community works by a different, contrary logic to that of a sin-bent outlook – that of God’s Word (Logos), who by uniting himself to our weakness without sinning transforms us. Thus, the Christian community is not focused on sin as such, as the wise old Canon points out in Georges Bernanos’ novel The Diary of a Country Priest. Rather, its entire perspective opens the way to live in celebrating with joy faith in Christ, who issues in an atmosphere of the grace, hope and love.

     St Peter-Julian Eymard, the apostle of the Eucharist, encouraged people in a sermon on frequent communion to appreciate the transforming beauty of Christ giving himself freely and generously to all who approach him with the right dispositions of expressing their needs: "Go to the holy table, come to visit the Blessed Sacrament. Ah! Believe deeply in the atmosphere of grace in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament and in the places where it dwells. Would we come without asking him for anything; we’ll be amazed and changed. The atmosphere! The Eucharist is a perfume that is experienced even by ungodly people."

 (21 March 1867 – Œuvres Complètes, PP 23,3)

Despite Dostoevsky’s warning about people choosing bread to satisfy material wants rather than the word of God, the Eucharistic community, nevertheless, is indeed the divine milieu in which beggars are nourished and strengthened to tell others, their sisters and brothers, where to find the true Bread of life.

Image at the top: Christ's third temptation and thwarting of the Devil
(detail from Sandro Botticelli's Temptations of Christ, Sistine Chapel)

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