THE ROCKS



One bitterly cold evening in March the rectory telephone rang. An excited voice announced: "Father, this is Bill. Grandpa is dying."

Since Grandpa lived just about a block from the rectory, Father decided to walk over. He bundled up, pulling his overcoat up around his neck.

As he rounded the corner, a figure stepped out from a building, gun in hand. "Give me your money. And hurry up."

Father opened his overcoat to reach for his billfold in an inside pocket. With that the robber exclaimed as he caught sight of the Roman collar: "Oh, excuse me, Father. I didn’t know you were a Catholic priest."

Relieved and grateful, the priest replied: "Here have a cigar." Waving his hand, the robber blurted: "No thanks, Father. I gave up smoking during Lent" (Arthur Tonne).

Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Week, leading up to Easter, and Lent owes much of its spirit to the forty days Jesus spent in the desert preparing for His ministry as we heard in today's Gospel. (Lk 4:1-13)

For many, Lent is a time to give up something like candy or smoking, or more frequent Mass attendance, etc. But if we stop short at that we would miss the important point of Lent.

When Jesus entered the desert, He left behind all illusions, about Himself and about God. After 40 days without food, He was hungry and was tempted to consider material goods as something of high value that could satisfy His need. He was tempted to use power of the Son of God to change stone into bread—doing something un-natural, against nature, against the will of God the Father. But Jesus knew that material goods cannot satisfy us completely, besides, He came to the world just to do His Father's will, not His.

In the second temptation, which relates to power and glory, the bait is greater: ALL the kingdoms of the world! Imagine that someone of high authority giving us a title of president of a well-known club, let alone nation, we're hardly able to resist that temptation, aren't we?

We can see that, the hunger for power does not belong to politicians only but to everyone. Even kids, the older rarely yields power to the younger. But power itself is not bad. The difference is its uses. We use power of law to regulate a society. But a dictator uses it to destroy the opponents, to maintain his authority, and to satisfy his ambition.

When Jesus was tempted with power, in His position, He was tempted to conquer the world without the cross, without sacrifice. He was tempted to conquer the world in an evil and easy way!

We can see that kind of victory in human history: terrorists, wars and bloodshed of violence, or abuses in families, or exploitation at work places. Are there any glory in those victories? Just ask the victims, they have the right answer.

In the third temptation Jesus was led to Jerusalem—the temple of God, a sacred place—just to test God the Father! After seeing Jesus' strong will, the devil tested Jesus' faith. How clever he is!

Faith sometimes is confused with conditional love. Having faith in someone means "I still believe in you as long as you listen to me". Having faith in God sometimes means "I believe in you, I love you if you grant this or that to me, give me a success, don't let me fall, don't let me hurt, do everything for me, prove to me that you are God!" Faith often is confused with conditional love and sometimes it is blasphemy!

The devil did exactly like that. He said to Jesus: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here," for God would never let the beloved Son hurt, even "dash your foot against a stone”!

Faith requires truth. Jesus knew that He is just the Son and His mission was to reconcile human to God: to restore human dignity to a level much higher as before
which was lost by the sin of old Adam, who disobeyed and wanted equal with God.
So how could Jesus oppose to the higher One? And how could He, the new Adam, accomplish His mission if His will be realized instead of the Father's?

St. Justin Martyr said, "No one in his right mind gives up piety for impiety," we could add, "No one in his right mind gives up righteousness for sinfulness," so Jesus did and proved His sinless nature to the last breath, as the night in the Garden of Olive witnessed: He was left to His own; He was tortured to the last blood; He obeyed to the end, and God the Father still kept silence.

Indeed, the death on the cross of Jesus finished His life on earth and all its glory, power, and possession. And that is the fate of human; that is the destination of material goods and we were reminded about that on Ash Wednesday, "Remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return."

Lent season leads us to the desert as Jesus did. The desert is an empty place to live. It is similar to the God's silence. There is no one to help but ourselves. The desert's deprivation has at least two effects: either we recognize clearly who we are, what we need, and whom we depend on; or we try to run away from it by all costs—but for how long?

Lent is a season necessary for us to look back, to review our priorities.

A philosophy professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks--rocks about 2" in diameter. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was. So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was. The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.
"Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things--your family, your partner, your health, your children--anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed.
"The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car.
"The sand is everything else. The small stuff.
"If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff,
you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness…
"Take care of the rocks first--the things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
(Rocks and Sand)

Those are the words of a philosophy professor and how right they are! We, the Catholics--besides our family, our health, our church, etc--have other rocks in our life, such as our faith, our hope, and after-life.

In the temptation of Jesus, it's worthy to note that the Spirit led Him into the desert to be tested by the devil. So temptation is not bad at all, even needed to see how strong our faith, how fragile our nature and that helps us come out of illusions--about ourselves and life--and to strengthen us spiritually.

Lent is a time to look back, to set our priorities. That's is a job that nobody could do for us. In Jesus' temptation, He did not want to turn rock into bread, though it was necessary to Him. Likewise, God does not want to interfere in our life to turn our rocks into something that we desire. We should set our priority and work for it because we need to justify our behaviors, we need to prove that we are serious about our life—a life of an adult in faith.

Pray that Lent will help us to see ourselves clearly.

Dcn Nhat Tran