Jesus bore witness to the distress He felt in His heart; Believe Me, Jesus said, believe Me, one of you is to betray Me. - John 13:21 - There were twelve questions in all. Ten of the apostles asked, "Is it I, Lord?" They were all full of sorrow, and began to say, one after another, Lord, is it I?" - Matthew 26:22 -
One, however, asked: "Lord, who is it? - John 13:26 -
This was John himself. The twelfth had little choice but to continue his pretense.
Then, Judas Iscariot, he who was betraying Him, said openly, Master, is it I? - Matthew 26:25 -
Notice that eleven called Him Lord - but Judas called Him Master. It is a perfect illustration of Saint Paul's insistence that "it is only through the Holy Spirit that anyone can say, Jesus is the Lord." - 1 Corinthian 12:3 - Because the spirit that filled Judas Iscariot was satanic, he called Him Master; the others called Him Lord, in full confession of His divinity.
Throughout the first part of the Passover meal, both Our Lord and Judas had been dipping their hands in the same dish of wine and fruit. The very fact that Our Lord Jesus chose bread as a symbol of the betrayal might have reminded Judas of the Bread promised at Capernaum. Humanly speaking, it would seem that Our Lord should have thundered out His denunciation of Judas, but, rather, in a last attempt to save him, He used the bread of fellowship.
He answered, The man who has put his hand into the dish with Me will betray Me. The Son of Man goes on His way, as the scripture foretells of Him; But woe upon that man by whom the Son of Man is to be betrayed; better for that man if he had never been born. - Matthew 26:23-25 -
In the presence of divinity, who can be sure of his innocence? It was reasonable for every disciple to ask if it was he. Man is a mystery even to himself. He knows that within his heart there lie, coiled and dormant, serpents that at any moment can sting a neighbor, or even God, with their poison. None of the Apostles could be sure that he was not the traitor, even if none was conscious of a temptation to betray Him. Judas alone knew where he stood. Even though Our Lord Jesus revealed His knowledge of the treason, Judas remained fixed in his determination to do the evil. The revelation that the crime was uncovered and the evil stripped naked did not shame him into withdrawal.
Some recoil in horror when their sins are put bluntly before them. But though Judas saw his treachery described in all its deformity, he in effect declared in the language of Nietzsche, "Evil, be thou my good." Our Lord gave a sign to Judas. In answer to the question of the Apostles ("Is it I?"), He declared:
It is the man to whom I give this piece of bread which I am dipping in the dish. Then He dipped the bread, and gave it to Judas the Son of Simon, the Iscariot. - John 13:26-27 -
That Judas committed his sin freely is evidenced by his subsequent remorse. So too was Christ free to make His betrayal the condition of His Cross. Evil men seem to run counter to the economy of God, to be an errant thread in the tapestry of life, but they all fit into the divine plan. If the wild wind roars from the black heavens, there is somewhere a sail to catch it and yoke it to the useful service of man.
When Our Lord Jesus said, "It is the man to whom I give this piece of bread which I am dipping in the dish" He was actually offering a gesture of friendship. The giving of the morsel seems to have been traditional among both Greeks and Semites. Socrates said that it was always a mark of favor to give a morsel to a table neighbor. Our Lord held open to Judas the opportunity to repent, as He later did once again in the Garden of Gethsemane. But though Our Lord held the door open, Judas would not enter. Rather, Satan would enter in.
The morsel once given, Satan entered into him; and Jesus said to him, Be quick on thy errand. - John 13:27 -
Satan possesses only willing victims. The marks of mercy and friendship extended by the Victim should have moved Judas to repentance. The bread must have burned his lips, as the thirty pieces of silver would later burn his hands. Only some minutes previously the hands of the Son of God had washed the feet of Judas; now the same divine hands touch the lips of Judas with a morsel; in a few hours, the lips of Judas will kiss those of Our Lord in the final act of betrayal. The Divine Mediator, knowing all that would befall Him, directed Judas to open wider the curtain on the tragedy of Calvary. What Judas was to do, let him do quickly. The Lamb of God was ready for sacrifice.
The Divine Mercy did not identify the traitor, for Our Lord hid from the others the identity of the betrayer. The practice of the world, which loves to spread scandals, even those which are untrue, is here reversed in the hiding of what is true. When they saw Judas leave, the others assumed that he went on a mission of charity.
None of those who sat there could understand the drift of what He said; some of them thought, since Judas kept the common purse, that Jesus was saying to him, Go and buy what we need for the feast, or bidding him give some alms to the poor. - John 13:28 -
But Judas has gone out to sell, not to buy. He would minister not to the poor, but to the rich in charge of the temple treasury. Though Our Blessed Lord knew the evil intention of Judas, He still continued to behave kindly. He would bear the ignominy alone. In many instances, Jesus acted as though the effects of the deeds of others were unknown to Him. He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, even when He wept. He knew who believed Him not and who would betray Him, yet this did not harden His Sacred Heart. Judas rejected the last appeal, and thus despair remained in His heart.
Judas went out, "and it was night" - John 13:30 - an appropriate setting for a deed of darkness. It perhaps was a relief to be away from the Light of the World. Nature is in sympathy at times in discord, with our joys and sorrows. The sky is gloomy with clouds when there is melancholy within. Nature was suiting itself to the evil deeds of Judas. When he went out, he found not the fact of God's smiling sun, but the Stygian blackness of night. It would also be right at midday when the Lord was crucified.
Judas is intelligible only in terms of the Body and Blood of Christ. Clawing at money was the effect, not the cause, of a ruined priesthood.
Bishops, Priests, Clergy can learn much by reflecting on Judas Iscariot and the priesthood.
1. - Those who have been called in the sacred associations of the priesthood know best how to betray Our Lord Jesus Christ. Judas knew where to find Our Lord after dark.
Here there was a garden, into which He and His disciples went. Judas, His betrayer, knew the place well; Jesus and His disciples had often forgathered in it. - John 18:1-2 -
2.- Divinity is so holy that all betrayal must be prefaced by some mark of esteem or affection.
It is none other, he told them, than the Man whom I shall greet with a kiss. - Matthew 26:48 -
3. - No bishop or priest knows the ultimate depth of spiritual sorrow and grief until he has felt the hot, blistering kiss of a brother in Christ who is a traitor.
4. - A priest can always sell Our Lord Jesus, but no priest can buy Him.
Whereupon they laid down thirty pieces of silver. - Matthew 26:15 -
5. - Any pleasure, profit or gain that once receives through rejecting the Eucharistic Lord proves so disgusting that the beneficiary is impelled, like Judas, to throw it back in the face of those who gave it.
And now Judas, His betrayer, was full of remorse at seeing Him condemned, so that he brought back to the chief priests and elders their thirty pieces of silver; I have sinned, he told them, in betraying the Blood of an Innocent Man. - Matthew 27:3-4 -
Could not the money have been given to the poor? Judas never thought of that then.
6. - Many psychoses and neuroses are due to an unrequited sense of guilt. The Lord would have pardoned Judas as He pardoned Peter, but Judas never asked for pardon.
When a man hates himself for what he has done and is without repentance to God, he will sometimes pound his breast as if to blot out a sin. There is a world of difference between pounding a breast in self-disgust and pounding it with the mea culpa of one asking for pardon. Self-hatred can become so intense as to pound the life out of a man, leading him to suicide. Though death is a penalty of original sin and naturally feared by any normal person, some rush into its arms.
The conscience of Judas warned before the sin. After the sin it gnawed, and the rending was such that he could not bear it. Down the valley of Kidron he went, that valley of so many ghostly associations. Jagged rocks and gnarled and stunted trees he chose as the proper place to empty himself of self. Everything around proclaimed his destiny and his end. Nothing was more revolting to his eyes than the gilded roof of the temple, for it reminded him of the Temple of God he had just sold. Every tree seemed the gibbet to which he had sentenced innocent Blood. Every branch was an accusing finger. The very hill on which he stood overlooked Calvary, whereon the One he had sentenced to death would unite heaven and earth, a union he would now exert his final efforts to prevent. Throwing a rope over a limb of a tree, he hanged himself. - Matthew 27:5 -
The lesson is clear. We are Eucharistic priests. Watch a priest say Mass and you can tell how he treats souls in a confessional, how he ministers to the sick and poor, whether or not he is interested in making converts, whether he is more concerned about pleasing the "Bishop" than "the Lord God" how effective he is in instilling patience and resignation in those who suffer, whether he loves the rich, or the rich and the poor, and whether he gives only money-sermons or Christ words. The moral rot of the priesthood starts with a want of lively faith in the Divine Presence, and the sanctity of the priesthood starts there too.
Throughout the first part of the Passover meal, both Our Lord and Judas had been dipping their hands in the same dish of wine and fruit. The very fact that Our Lord Jesus chose bread as a symbol of the betrayal might have reminded Judas of the Bread promised at Capernaum. Humanly speaking, it would seem that Our Lord should have thundered out His denunciation of Judas, but, rather, in a last attempt to save him, He used the bread of fellowship.
He answered, The man who has put his hand into the dish with Me will betray Me. The Son of Man goes on His way, as the scripture foretells of Him; But woe upon that man by whom the Son of Man is to be betrayed; better for that man if he had never been born. - Matthew 26:23-25 -
In the presence of divinity, who can be sure of his innocence? It was reasonable for every disciple to ask if it was he. Man is a mystery even to himself. He knows that within his heart there lie, coiled and dormant, serpents that at any moment can sting a neighbor, or even God, with their poison. None of the Apostles could be sure that he was not the traitor, even if none was conscious of a temptation to betray Him. Judas alone knew where he stood. Even though Our Lord Jesus revealed His knowledge of the treason, Judas remained fixed in his determination to do the evil. The revelation that the crime was uncovered and the evil stripped naked did not shame him into withdrawal.
Some recoil in horror when their sins are put bluntly before them. But though Judas saw his treachery described in all its deformity, he in effect declared in the language of Nietzsche, "Evil, be thou my good." Our Lord gave a sign to Judas. In answer to the question of the Apostles ("Is it I?"), He declared:
It is the man to whom I give this piece of bread which I am dipping in the dish. Then He dipped the bread, and gave it to Judas the Son of Simon, the Iscariot. - John 13:26-27 -
That Judas committed his sin freely is evidenced by his subsequent remorse. So too was Christ free to make His betrayal the condition of His Cross. Evil men seem to run counter to the economy of God, to be an errant thread in the tapestry of life, but they all fit into the divine plan. If the wild wind roars from the black heavens, there is somewhere a sail to catch it and yoke it to the useful service of man.
When Our Lord Jesus said, "It is the man to whom I give this piece of bread which I am dipping in the dish" He was actually offering a gesture of friendship. The giving of the morsel seems to have been traditional among both Greeks and Semites. Socrates said that it was always a mark of favor to give a morsel to a table neighbor. Our Lord held open to Judas the opportunity to repent, as He later did once again in the Garden of Gethsemane. But though Our Lord held the door open, Judas would not enter. Rather, Satan would enter in.
The morsel once given, Satan entered into him; and Jesus said to him, Be quick on thy errand. - John 13:27 -
Satan possesses only willing victims. The marks of mercy and friendship extended by the Victim should have moved Judas to repentance. The bread must have burned his lips, as the thirty pieces of silver would later burn his hands. Only some minutes previously the hands of the Son of God had washed the feet of Judas; now the same divine hands touch the lips of Judas with a morsel; in a few hours, the lips of Judas will kiss those of Our Lord in the final act of betrayal. The Divine Mediator, knowing all that would befall Him, directed Judas to open wider the curtain on the tragedy of Calvary. What Judas was to do, let him do quickly. The Lamb of God was ready for sacrifice.
The Divine Mercy did not identify the traitor, for Our Lord hid from the others the identity of the betrayer. The practice of the world, which loves to spread scandals, even those which are untrue, is here reversed in the hiding of what is true. When they saw Judas leave, the others assumed that he went on a mission of charity.
None of those who sat there could understand the drift of what He said; some of them thought, since Judas kept the common purse, that Jesus was saying to him, Go and buy what we need for the feast, or bidding him give some alms to the poor. - John 13:28 -
But Judas has gone out to sell, not to buy. He would minister not to the poor, but to the rich in charge of the temple treasury. Though Our Blessed Lord knew the evil intention of Judas, He still continued to behave kindly. He would bear the ignominy alone. In many instances, Jesus acted as though the effects of the deeds of others were unknown to Him. He knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, even when He wept. He knew who believed Him not and who would betray Him, yet this did not harden His Sacred Heart. Judas rejected the last appeal, and thus despair remained in His heart.
Judas went out, "and it was night" - John 13:30 - an appropriate setting for a deed of darkness. It perhaps was a relief to be away from the Light of the World. Nature is in sympathy at times in discord, with our joys and sorrows. The sky is gloomy with clouds when there is melancholy within. Nature was suiting itself to the evil deeds of Judas. When he went out, he found not the fact of God's smiling sun, but the Stygian blackness of night. It would also be right at midday when the Lord was crucified.
Judas is intelligible only in terms of the Body and Blood of Christ. Clawing at money was the effect, not the cause, of a ruined priesthood.
Bishops, Priests, Clergy can learn much by reflecting on Judas Iscariot and the priesthood.
1. - Those who have been called in the sacred associations of the priesthood know best how to betray Our Lord Jesus Christ. Judas knew where to find Our Lord after dark.
Here there was a garden, into which He and His disciples went. Judas, His betrayer, knew the place well; Jesus and His disciples had often forgathered in it. - John 18:1-2 -
2.- Divinity is so holy that all betrayal must be prefaced by some mark of esteem or affection.
It is none other, he told them, than the Man whom I shall greet with a kiss. - Matthew 26:48 -
3. - No bishop or priest knows the ultimate depth of spiritual sorrow and grief until he has felt the hot, blistering kiss of a brother in Christ who is a traitor.
4. - A priest can always sell Our Lord Jesus, but no priest can buy Him.
Whereupon they laid down thirty pieces of silver. - Matthew 26:15 -
5. - Any pleasure, profit or gain that once receives through rejecting the Eucharistic Lord proves so disgusting that the beneficiary is impelled, like Judas, to throw it back in the face of those who gave it.
And now Judas, His betrayer, was full of remorse at seeing Him condemned, so that he brought back to the chief priests and elders their thirty pieces of silver; I have sinned, he told them, in betraying the Blood of an Innocent Man. - Matthew 27:3-4 -
Could not the money have been given to the poor? Judas never thought of that then.
6. - Many psychoses and neuroses are due to an unrequited sense of guilt. The Lord would have pardoned Judas as He pardoned Peter, but Judas never asked for pardon.
When a man hates himself for what he has done and is without repentance to God, he will sometimes pound his breast as if to blot out a sin. There is a world of difference between pounding a breast in self-disgust and pounding it with the mea culpa of one asking for pardon. Self-hatred can become so intense as to pound the life out of a man, leading him to suicide. Though death is a penalty of original sin and naturally feared by any normal person, some rush into its arms.
The conscience of Judas warned before the sin. After the sin it gnawed, and the rending was such that he could not bear it. Down the valley of Kidron he went, that valley of so many ghostly associations. Jagged rocks and gnarled and stunted trees he chose as the proper place to empty himself of self. Everything around proclaimed his destiny and his end. Nothing was more revolting to his eyes than the gilded roof of the temple, for it reminded him of the Temple of God he had just sold. Every tree seemed the gibbet to which he had sentenced innocent Blood. Every branch was an accusing finger. The very hill on which he stood overlooked Calvary, whereon the One he had sentenced to death would unite heaven and earth, a union he would now exert his final efforts to prevent. Throwing a rope over a limb of a tree, he hanged himself. - Matthew 27:5 -
The lesson is clear. We are Eucharistic priests. Watch a priest say Mass and you can tell how he treats souls in a confessional, how he ministers to the sick and poor, whether or not he is interested in making converts, whether he is more concerned about pleasing the "Bishop" than "the Lord God" how effective he is in instilling patience and resignation in those who suffer, whether he loves the rich, or the rich and the poor, and whether he gives only money-sermons or Christ words. The moral rot of the priesthood starts with a want of lively faith in the Divine Presence, and the sanctity of the priesthood starts there too.
The question is not why do we sin, because there is a distinction between temptation and sin. Temptation is merely a solicitation, and invitation, a suggestion to do wrong. Sin is the voluntary doing of that wrong thing. Sacred Scripture says, "Blessed is the man who suffers temptation." In this context means trial. The sixth petition of the Lord's Prayer, "And lead us not into temptation," is a petition to escape trials which we cannot master.
When Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible states that God tempted Abraham, it merely means God tried Abraham's faith as a goldsmith tries gold in the fire; there is a world of difference between God trying His people and inciting their corruption.
Coming more precisely to the subject of temptation, here are a few basic principles:
1. - Temptation comes from the duality or complexity of our nature. We are not simple creatures like crystals, but rather a compound of body and soul, matter and spirit. The human personality is like a driver in a chariot, as Plato suggested. Before him are two headstrong steeds: one is the animal urge with us, and the other the spirit. The charioteer, or the driver, has great difficulty to get both steeds headed in the same direction.
Though modern psychology has done much to develop the nature of this tension, it must not be thought that the tension inside man was not known in the past. The greatest of Greek dramatists, Sophocles, wrote of the great primeval disharmony that it was "grave with age and infected all men." Ovid, the Latin poet, wrote: "I see and approve the better things of life, but the worse things in life I follow."
Every human beings in the world can bear witness to the civil war which goes on inside his being. Good people sometimes act like bad people; very bad people, in certain circumstances, will act like good people. Goethe regretted that God had made him only one man. There was enough material in him for both a saint and a villain.
2. - It must not be thought that origin of temptation is solely to be sought in the individual human personality. If the origin were wholly within the person, it is conceivable that some would be without temptation; but there is no one in the world who is not tempted - absolutely no one. The nature of the temptation may vary one from another, and they may even vary with age. Confucius divided temptations into three different stages of human life: in youth man is tempted to lust, in middle age to pride and power, and in old age to avarice or greed. No one tells the full story of temptation by seeking its origin in a grandfather or a grandmother, or too much love for a father or too little love for a mother, crowded tenements, low calorie diet or insufficient education.
3. - The true origin of the conflict is not to be found in the individual exclusively but in human nature. This assumes there is a difference between "nature" and "person". Nature answers to the question, "What is it?" A person answers to the question, "Who is it?" A pencil is not a person. An atom is not a person. John Jones is a person. Something has happened to disturb the original human nature so that it is now neither an angel nor a devil. Human nature is not intrinsically corrupt (as some theologians claimed, more than 400 years ago) nor is it intrinsically divine (as philosophers began saying, more than 50 years ago) Rather, human nature has aspirations for good which it sometimes finds impossible to realize completely by itself; at the same time, human nature has inclinations to evil which solicit it away from these ideas.
It is like a man who is down a well of his own stupidity. He or She knows that he ought not to be there, but he cannot get out by himself/herself. Or to change the picture, he is like a clock whose mainspring is broken. He needs to be fixed on the inside, but repairs must be supplied from without. He is a creature who can run well again, but only if Someone outside has the kindness to repair him. This Someone is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of human nature. He came not to teach only but also to heal the breach caused by false freedom.
Many evil things are done quickly. Hence the Divine Savior/the Lord Jesus Christ, the night of the Last Supper, said to Judas Iscariot who was about to betray Him: "What you are going to do, do quickly." Satan on the mount of temptation tried to induce the Lord Jesus Christ to a short cut of saving people, and not by the Cross of Redemption. Satan promised all the kingdoms of the world "now." The reward for leaving evil in the hearts of people was the immediate delivery of political powers of earth.
Impatience or precipitous hurry is related to pride and to egotism. The annoyance felt at the cold coffee, the late morning newspaper, the delay in the appointment, all betray that the ego is considered that which must be served immediately.
The business person is always in a hurry; even his or her pleasures are fast. He does not taste food; he gulps it. He waits not for fruit; he plucks blossoms. About the only patience he has, and it is not true patience, is waiting for the stock market to go higher. This is really not patience, but a haunting quest for "more."
Youth too, has something of this impatience in its precociousness as regards pleasure. At an early age youth can feel already jaded, among some of life's sensible experiences. There is a lust of finishing life, even before it has begun. That is why there is such a love of speed, for the speed of youth is not to get to a certain point, but to show impatience with life.
Despite the American love of hurry, in the New Testament alone there is a recommendation to patience more than thirty times. Patience is not a passivity, but a strong endurance in the face of seeming defeat and disappointment; it is a refusal to be crushed by the blows of circumstances.
Two of the famous expressions are: "He who believes, does not hasten," and "In your patience, possess your souls." The possession of the soul describes the state in which a person has full command and undisturbed enjoyment of himself in opposition to outside influences, which disturb and decompose his peace of mind. Vain is wealth and prosperity and even health when unrestrained violence of temper becomes a source of disturbance and vexation. The loud complaint, the querulous temper and the fretful spirit disgrace character and show that the mind is unmanned by misfortunes.
There are many who excuse themselves, saying that if they were in other circumstances they would be much more patient. This is a grave mistake, for its assumes that virtue is a matter of geography and not of moral effort. It makes little differences where we are; it all depends on what we are thinking. What happens to us is not so important as how we react to what happens. Patience is not absence of action. It waits for the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.
Patience is not insensibility. It is a result of thought. It is a very active bearing up of oneself under the pressure of calamity. Every person has a soul to save, but this cannot be done except by steadfast loyalty to the highest and the best. Patience then is a submissive waiting, a frame of mind which is willing to wait because it knows Whom it serves, because it is willing to endure in gratitude to God Who endured all, and also because the soul is worth more than the universe.
What often passes as religion is nothing but ethics and natural morality. Religion as a Divine force implies something that is non-human; namely, a gift from above [God] which can be accepted or rejected. God in some way enlightens the mind to see a truth that was never seen before; He strengthens the will to do things about it that were never done before, thus setting before us motives which will persuade the will to accept what is freely given. This gift is called 'grace' because gratis.
The grace of God is like the light of the sun which is outside the window. If the blinds of our will are down, or if the windows are dirty because of our behavior, the light will not come in. Human cooperation is, therefore, essential for the entering into a higher and Diviner life than the merely human. All this is a very mysteriously and slow process. In the springtime the fields are arrayed in their beautiful vesture, but one cannot see the power of God raising the sap through root and fibre, along stem and branch, and unfolding each bud and blossom.
So it is with the work of salvation. No angels announced that God has commenced His earthly life. He who, however, begins to be responsive to the gift, immediately sees that there are tremendous obstacles to be surmounted, mountains of pride and self-righteousness to be laid low, prejudices to be swept away. The consideration that God works in the soul leaves it without either excuse for negligence or ground for despondency.
Anyone with psychological insight can see a kind of interaction going on inside of himself. On the one hand there is the overcoming and the casting out of evil, and on the other, there is the assimilation and unfolding of good. It is like passing from disease to health. There is a joint working of God and man, man being able to do his part because God works, and God's working requires man's cooperation. The food in our stomach will not avail us for health, unless the organism cooperates. We must at least be able to digest it. God can no more become the spiritual life, light and strength of the soul any more than undigested bread can become the staff of life.
Most human beings refuse to allow Divine workings in their souls because it requires a change of behavior. The result is continued mediocrity and ordinariness. Man without the grace of God is like a body without food. What a starving man is, such is man without God. It would be foolish for a starving man to say: "I cannot take any food until I am stronger." How could he expect to be strong without food: One cannot feed on oneself. That is why humanism is insufficient. God is waiting to do His Part; we in secret either cooperate or lose the benefit.
When Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible states that God tempted Abraham, it merely means God tried Abraham's faith as a goldsmith tries gold in the fire; there is a world of difference between God trying His people and inciting their corruption.
Coming more precisely to the subject of temptation, here are a few basic principles:
1. - Temptation comes from the duality or complexity of our nature. We are not simple creatures like crystals, but rather a compound of body and soul, matter and spirit. The human personality is like a driver in a chariot, as Plato suggested. Before him are two headstrong steeds: one is the animal urge with us, and the other the spirit. The charioteer, or the driver, has great difficulty to get both steeds headed in the same direction.
Though modern psychology has done much to develop the nature of this tension, it must not be thought that the tension inside man was not known in the past. The greatest of Greek dramatists, Sophocles, wrote of the great primeval disharmony that it was "grave with age and infected all men." Ovid, the Latin poet, wrote: "I see and approve the better things of life, but the worse things in life I follow."
Every human beings in the world can bear witness to the civil war which goes on inside his being. Good people sometimes act like bad people; very bad people, in certain circumstances, will act like good people. Goethe regretted that God had made him only one man. There was enough material in him for both a saint and a villain.
2. - It must not be thought that origin of temptation is solely to be sought in the individual human personality. If the origin were wholly within the person, it is conceivable that some would be without temptation; but there is no one in the world who is not tempted - absolutely no one. The nature of the temptation may vary one from another, and they may even vary with age. Confucius divided temptations into three different stages of human life: in youth man is tempted to lust, in middle age to pride and power, and in old age to avarice or greed. No one tells the full story of temptation by seeking its origin in a grandfather or a grandmother, or too much love for a father or too little love for a mother, crowded tenements, low calorie diet or insufficient education.
3. - The true origin of the conflict is not to be found in the individual exclusively but in human nature. This assumes there is a difference between "nature" and "person". Nature answers to the question, "What is it?" A person answers to the question, "Who is it?" A pencil is not a person. An atom is not a person. John Jones is a person. Something has happened to disturb the original human nature so that it is now neither an angel nor a devil. Human nature is not intrinsically corrupt (as some theologians claimed, more than 400 years ago) nor is it intrinsically divine (as philosophers began saying, more than 50 years ago) Rather, human nature has aspirations for good which it sometimes finds impossible to realize completely by itself; at the same time, human nature has inclinations to evil which solicit it away from these ideas.
It is like a man who is down a well of his own stupidity. He or She knows that he ought not to be there, but he cannot get out by himself/herself. Or to change the picture, he is like a clock whose mainspring is broken. He needs to be fixed on the inside, but repairs must be supplied from without. He is a creature who can run well again, but only if Someone outside has the kindness to repair him. This Someone is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Redeemer of human nature. He came not to teach only but also to heal the breach caused by false freedom.
Many evil things are done quickly. Hence the Divine Savior/the Lord Jesus Christ, the night of the Last Supper, said to Judas Iscariot who was about to betray Him: "What you are going to do, do quickly." Satan on the mount of temptation tried to induce the Lord Jesus Christ to a short cut of saving people, and not by the Cross of Redemption. Satan promised all the kingdoms of the world "now." The reward for leaving evil in the hearts of people was the immediate delivery of political powers of earth.
Impatience or precipitous hurry is related to pride and to egotism. The annoyance felt at the cold coffee, the late morning newspaper, the delay in the appointment, all betray that the ego is considered that which must be served immediately.
The business person is always in a hurry; even his or her pleasures are fast. He does not taste food; he gulps it. He waits not for fruit; he plucks blossoms. About the only patience he has, and it is not true patience, is waiting for the stock market to go higher. This is really not patience, but a haunting quest for "more."
Youth too, has something of this impatience in its precociousness as regards pleasure. At an early age youth can feel already jaded, among some of life's sensible experiences. There is a lust of finishing life, even before it has begun. That is why there is such a love of speed, for the speed of youth is not to get to a certain point, but to show impatience with life.
Despite the American love of hurry, in the New Testament alone there is a recommendation to patience more than thirty times. Patience is not a passivity, but a strong endurance in the face of seeming defeat and disappointment; it is a refusal to be crushed by the blows of circumstances.
Two of the famous expressions are: "He who believes, does not hasten," and "In your patience, possess your souls." The possession of the soul describes the state in which a person has full command and undisturbed enjoyment of himself in opposition to outside influences, which disturb and decompose his peace of mind. Vain is wealth and prosperity and even health when unrestrained violence of temper becomes a source of disturbance and vexation. The loud complaint, the querulous temper and the fretful spirit disgrace character and show that the mind is unmanned by misfortunes.
There are many who excuse themselves, saying that if they were in other circumstances they would be much more patient. This is a grave mistake, for its assumes that virtue is a matter of geography and not of moral effort. It makes little differences where we are; it all depends on what we are thinking. What happens to us is not so important as how we react to what happens. Patience is not absence of action. It waits for the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.
Patience is not insensibility. It is a result of thought. It is a very active bearing up of oneself under the pressure of calamity. Every person has a soul to save, but this cannot be done except by steadfast loyalty to the highest and the best. Patience then is a submissive waiting, a frame of mind which is willing to wait because it knows Whom it serves, because it is willing to endure in gratitude to God Who endured all, and also because the soul is worth more than the universe.
What often passes as religion is nothing but ethics and natural morality. Religion as a Divine force implies something that is non-human; namely, a gift from above [God] which can be accepted or rejected. God in some way enlightens the mind to see a truth that was never seen before; He strengthens the will to do things about it that were never done before, thus setting before us motives which will persuade the will to accept what is freely given. This gift is called 'grace' because gratis.
The grace of God is like the light of the sun which is outside the window. If the blinds of our will are down, or if the windows are dirty because of our behavior, the light will not come in. Human cooperation is, therefore, essential for the entering into a higher and Diviner life than the merely human. All this is a very mysteriously and slow process. In the springtime the fields are arrayed in their beautiful vesture, but one cannot see the power of God raising the sap through root and fibre, along stem and branch, and unfolding each bud and blossom.
So it is with the work of salvation. No angels announced that God has commenced His earthly life. He who, however, begins to be responsive to the gift, immediately sees that there are tremendous obstacles to be surmounted, mountains of pride and self-righteousness to be laid low, prejudices to be swept away. The consideration that God works in the soul leaves it without either excuse for negligence or ground for despondency.
Anyone with psychological insight can see a kind of interaction going on inside of himself. On the one hand there is the overcoming and the casting out of evil, and on the other, there is the assimilation and unfolding of good. It is like passing from disease to health. There is a joint working of God and man, man being able to do his part because God works, and God's working requires man's cooperation. The food in our stomach will not avail us for health, unless the organism cooperates. We must at least be able to digest it. God can no more become the spiritual life, light and strength of the soul any more than undigested bread can become the staff of life.
Most human beings refuse to allow Divine workings in their souls because it requires a change of behavior. The result is continued mediocrity and ordinariness. Man without the grace of God is like a body without food. What a starving man is, such is man without God. It would be foolish for a starving man to say: "I cannot take any food until I am stronger." How could he expect to be strong without food: One cannot feed on oneself. That is why humanism is insufficient. God is waiting to do His Part; we in secret either cooperate or lose the benefit.
BY VENERABLE / ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN ( 1895 to 1979 )
- WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY -
Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!
Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 -
If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 -
I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -
Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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