Gen 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Rom 5:12.17-19; Matt 4:1-11
Theme: Every Temptation is an Opportunity to Choose either Angelic Ministration or Feeling of Emptiness/Nothingness.
The readings of today present us with the general theme of Temptation and Sin. Temptation and sin are always inseparable such that before one falls, there is always an instigation. Sin is only but the last result of one’s giving in to temptation. But whereas sin is evil and injurious, temptation is not itself evil. Every temptation in fact, is an opportunity for us to take a side: either insisting on the side of God, or deviating from it.
Temptation comes in different ways but what matters is our attentiveness to discover when we are being asked by the evil one to choose between his words and God’s words. In the case of Adam and Eve, the tempter was living in the garden with them. In fact, the story does not situate the serpent outside the garden, such that it had to sneak into the garden. Furthermore, in the story, the serpent is not shown as a strange figure to Eve. The story just described the nature of the serpent and immediately, it shows where it engages the woman in a discussion regarding God’s order to them. Our tempter must not be a stranger or an enemy. Most of the time, the evil one uses people and situations that are very familiar to us to tempt us. It can be our family members, our friends, our teachers, our pastors etc. Hence, we have to be careful to discover when a conversation with even our family members or friends begin to gear towards suggesting that we indulge in a forbidden actions.
In the case of Eve and Jesus, we observe the tempters deep knowledge of the word of God. Not everybody carrying bible or quoting from Genesis to Revelation is of/from God. That this man or that woman preaches the word of God, prays chaplet in his adoration ground, quotes the passages of the Bible etc., is not a yardstick of determining who actually is of/from God.
Furthermore, it is not our knowledge of the Word of God which saves us. Even the evil one sometimes knows the Word of God more than many of us. What saves us instead is the acceptance/adoption of, believing in, and living by the Word of God. This is the difference between Jesus’s quoting of God’s Words (Matt 4:4,7,10) and that of Eve (Gen 3:3). Eve’s citation of what God says is only a memorized reported reported speech that gives ingredients to her chatting with the tempter. But Jesus’s use of the Word is to dismiss the instigations of the tempter. Our usage of God’s words should be backed up by our total belief in the Word. This is why two people would pray with the same God’s Words, it would produce fruits in one, but no fruit in the other. Every time we are tempted, the way we handle it determines what awaits us. That is, either we overcome and have this experience of victory and joy in us, or we fall and then experience total NOTHINGNESS/EMPTINESS.
Hence, we can say that every temptation that comes to us anticipates either the ministering of the heavenly hosts, filling us with joy, satisfaction and honor, or the realization of darkness and emptiness. However, in both case, immediately after the temptation, the tempter leaves immediately, just like we see in both Eve’s and Jesus’s case. The things that come to us as temptation always appear to be attractive or somehow drawing our curiosity. But at the end, when we fall into the test, we always come out to discover that actually there was nothing in. The more we give in to temptation, the deeper our nakedness, emptiness, nothingness. The tempter presented the tree as capable of bringing man to have the same knowledge as God. But it gave them the knowledge of their nakedness and inability to trust.
Hence, we can say that there was nothing so special about the tree but stands only as a test from God to know how far man can trust him and keep to his words. There is a story that best explains what happens in the garden of Eden. A couple was coming back from a trip, when they came to the gate of their house, they saw a boy and a girl in their teens, looking very tattered, dirty, and hungry. The man with his wife came out of his car, tried to know who the duo was. They asked them, “who are you?” where are you from? What are you doing here? The two teenagers gave no response. They were not understanding English. The man tried using their native language, but no way. As the man was about to call security agency, the teenage boy said something in French. With the little French knowledge of the man’s wife, she was able to understand poorly though, the boy’s words. The boy had said: “please do not call them…they will find us”. Who are ‘they’? the woman asked immediately. After everything, it happened that the boy and the boy were siblings, who escaped from assassins who already killed their two parents. The man and the woman decided to take them inside, while they continue their quiet investigations. The man has one big house with two wings. He lived in the right wing with his wife and kept the two strangers in one room (each) in the left wing.
However, there was a bigger room in that same left wing, of which the man and the woman told their new teenagers: “Please, on no account should you open that room, nor enter inside. Any day you try it, we will send you out of our house”. Initially, it was a simple rule, but gradually, the teenagers began to ask: “Why is that room always locked?” “Why did they ask us not to go near the room?” “What is inside it?” From posing questions, they started desiring to give response to their answers. They said to themselves: There must be something valuable inside that room. So one night, when the couple had gone into their room to sleep, the boy also lied down to sleep, but the little girl, having been calculating on the best time to make her new discovery of the house, called up her brother, and they decided to sneak into the room and find out what was inside. They advanced towards the door, noticed that there was no lock on the door. They pulled the door handle and it opened. To their disappointment, the room was empty. There was absolutely nothing inside the room.
Immediately, they noticed the coupe standing behind them. “It was only a test”, the man said. You have your rooms, and many other rooms which are available for your use. This room has nothing inside. You should not have disobeyed”. This was the story of Adam and Eve, and invariably my and your story. Sin is always so exaggerated, decorated and enclosed, that we always imagine to ourselves: “why must this not be done?” And its doors are always easy to open. But each time we succeed in allowing ourselves be led to that door… the ‘attractive’ door of sin, thinking that it will lead us to something more than what we know or are, we only end up embracing NOTHINGNESS…EMPTINESS. That is the reality of sin, at any level or design. It is always an empty package which robs us of our own furnished reality, and crown us with its own nothingness/emptiness. Each time we give in to sin, we come out of it more naked. At a time, it may appear that we no longer feel this nothingness, this sense of emptiness, this sense of disgrace, and shame, which goes with every sin, but the fact remains that we are being striped off of our spiritual garments, our self-worth, our dignity, our energy and moral stance, each time we go in and come out of sin. Eve was the weaker part of Adam. She was Adam’s weakness. The mere sight of her turned a silent and moody Adam into a lively poet (Gen 2:23). To get that part of Adam, is to get Adam.
Once Eve, Adam’s weak part, is conquered, the strong man, Adam, becomes susceptible. The evil one knew this, and so, he went directly to Eve. In the same way, the evil one always seeks after our weak parts, the aspects of our lives we have not toughened spiritually… the things our appetites are still savoring for. Whenever he wants to get to us, he goes to those aspects of our lives. The joy, as expressed by St. Paul in the second reading, is that we are no longer in the weakness of Adam and Eve. The victory of the tempter over our first parents in the garden has been won back by Christ in the wilderness. The murmuring of the people of Israel against God in the desert has been repaired by Christ who refuses to do anything possible just as to have bread (Matt 4:4). Adam and Eve’s desire to be equal with God, in knowing the things God knows, has been refuted by Christ’s refusal of the devil’s instigation to perform a superman (Matt 4:7). Adam and Eve’s choosing of the evil one by listening and obeying his words instead of God’s has been repaired by Christ’s refusal to worship any other figure outside God (Matt 4:10).
May our worship of God and our living on God’s Words, help us to recognize when the evil one is instigating us to do anything possible just for our nourishment, or to seek to be a super- human or to directly or indirectly offer the worship or reverence meant only for God to any other created being.
Wishing you a very wonderful Sunday.
Fr. Chukwuezugo Nnamah