The first reading talks about the
Egyptians in slavery in Egypt and I mean
the Israelites enslaved in Egypt
and it says you have brought us out of
Egypt with his strong hand and
outstretched arm with signs and wonders
and spiritually they say we're all
spiritual slaves. We're slaves to sin but
again in Christ we are free. Outside of
Christ we're slaves to sin but in Christ
we are set free. In that gospel in
the desert we see the struggle that goes
on in each one of us to be more and more
free. It's the struggle between the
angelic and the animal.
That tension between the spiritual
and the physical. Someone described human
beings as having the intellect of an
archangel and the body of a rhinoceros.
There's an incongruency. It's like a
dissimilarity. We can soar with the
angels. We can listen to the symphonies
of Beethoven. We can lose ourselves in
contemplative prayer but we're linked to
the animals. We get hungry. We get
thirsty. We're hot. We're cold. There's
always that struggle between the
animal and the angelic. There are
some philosophers that give us false
ways out of that tension. Like Plato said
the goal was to escape from the body.
That's not what the church would say.
Plato would say that we need to escape
from the prison of the body.
Puritanism would say that the
body is evil. Again, that's not the
church's position. The church says we
have to integrate the physical and the
spiritual. Hedonism on the other hand
would say we have to yield to every
temptation. The way to get rid of
temptation is by surrendering to it.
Again, that's the other era. But the
church says,
for body-soul composite we have to
integrate, be at harmony between our
souls and our bodies. We say human
beings we can travel to distant galaxies
but at the same time we can wallow in
the mud.
We can conquer the world of space but
we have difficulty conquering ourselves.
God has made us a little less than the
angels and this, like we say, this season
is a time to tame the wild beast, to
integrate our physical nature into
our spiritual nature. Salvation is
taming the wild beast through the
sacraments, through the ministry of
angels, through the church. In Christ
we overcome temptation outside of
Christ. Temptation overcomes us. But we
say in Christ we find our victory. And
that's why the church gives us like a
prescription during Lent. Prayer, fasting,
almsgiving, to defeat the world, the
flesh, and the devil. The threefold
temptation comes against us but we go on
the offense. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving.
The spiritual exercises helping us to
overcome temptation. Once an agnostic
wrote to the famous author Gerard Manly
Hopkins and asked him, how can I believe?
The agnostic wanted to believe he wanted
to see. Hopkins wrote back, give alms, do
works of charity. Because charity is the
remedy that heals the senses of our
souls.
Again, fasting, another prescription the
church gives us. C.S. Lewis would say, the
benefit of fasting is discipline but the
danger is pride. We can become so good at
controlling our desires that we get
ambushed by pride. Because it's a
threefold attack. The world, the flesh, the
devil. The devil always seeks to draw us
into pride.
Mother Teresa emphasizing prayer says,
if we can't see Jesus in the white host
how will we see him in each other? The
more we love and adore him in the
Blessed Sacrament, the better we will be
able to love and serve him in others.
Again, that faith is the prerequisite to
charity.
So, the, um,
and even
um, there,
our souls almost have senses. Like, St.
Augustine says we can taste the truth.
Ok, when we hear the truth we can
taste it. The falsehood is
always bitter. There's some
something that we can taste that
disturbs us. Ok, but we can taste the
truth. When we hear the
truth we know it. We can smell the stench of sin.
We can smell the stench.
our sin.
We can feel a palpable presence of God, like in the church.
We can almost, when we enter church, feel the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.
It's almost like a force field that forces us to our knees.
And once we genuflect, the force field is released.
But it's a palpable presence.
And the peace that we experience here is, like we say,
it's something that we can feel.
With our soul.
And the more that God manifests himself to us,
the more radical must be our response.
The more decisive must be our turning toward him.
So the more he manifests himself through the church, through the sacraments,
the more responsibility we have to return the love that we have experienced from him.
And so,
they say one convert to the church described the struggle of Lent as two dogs fighting.
These two dogs fighting within them.
And the convert was asked, well, which one is winning?
And he said, whichever one I feed.
So the spiritual life is like those two dogs fighting.
And it's whichever one we feed that wins.
So Lent is the time.
It's the time to feed the spiritual, to help us overcome our natural inclinations.
Another analogy was someone was riding a horse.
And they were asked, where are you going?
And their response was, don't ask me, ask the horse.
Sometimes our lower nature rules our higher nature.
It's like our passions are running our lives.
But.
Lent helps us to restrain our lower nature, so that our higher nature can take over.
That our lower nature will be subject to our higher nature.
Like we say, to integrate ourselves.
So sin has kind of set us at war within ourselves.
But Lent is a time to tame the beast and to slay the dragons.
And so, in the Church, we have the rescue mission.
The Church's mission is rescue.
It's salvation.
In Jesus Christ, we defeat temptation.
In this time of Lent, by His grace, He gave us the victory over sin and death.
In Jesus Christ, we find our peace.
So during this season of Lent, we make use of the means that He gave us,
the grace that He gave us.
He won for us to defeat temptation and sin,
and to find our victory in salvation.