The desert in the Christian tradition symbolizes the place where one faces one’s shadow. One thing that we should keep in mind is that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the desert after his baptism. Let’s remember the glorious depiction of his baptism. As he was baptized in the Jordan river heaven was opened, the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him while the voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved with whom I am well pleased.” This message also reminds us of the transfiguration of Jesus in which the voice from heaven proclaimed the same about Jesus. The same Spirit led Jesus into the desert.
One thing that this guidance of the Spirit into the desert is that the Spirit is the Spirit of the truth that always leads us to face the reality as it is. In the desert, Jesus faces his own shadows. He encounters what is in the deepest depth of his being. We might think that there’s another creature suddenly showing up to Jesus and tempting him to forsake God. We can imagine an angel and a devil trying to convince Jesus to do one or the other. This, however, is not what happened. What took place is that Jesus was honestly facing his shadows that were also parts of him. If we think of the term “demon,” the prefix de- or da- originally means “divide,” “cut,” or “split.” Encountering one’s own demon is facing one’s dark shadow filled with selfish and egocentric desires. Often, we are so attached to these desires that we don’t even recognize they’re our shadows. In a way, being able to face and look at our shadows with courage and honesty is a healthy sign of one’s spiritual life. The very fact that one is able to see one’s own shadows is that one is now detached enough to see that shadow. After Jesus baptism, the Holy Spirit sheds light on his heart. He is able to see what’s hidden in his heart. Biblical scholars comment that Jesus’s three temptations represent our human desire to three powers: economic, spiritual, and political. Which actually does make sense. Don’t we all have this desire to make lots of money or at least have enough not to have to worry about it for the rest of our lives? Even for Jesus, perhaps more. He doesn’t come from a wealthy family. He knows what it’s like to be hungry and poor. Out of all three temptations, this desire to be an economic alchemist must’ve been the hardest. What about spiritual or religious power and authority that can influence people? Don’t we have this desire to have a supernatural power? Imagine yourself being able to prophesy, heal the sick, or be immune to diseases and accidents. You can surely jump off from the top of the Empire State Building and not get hurt at all. It’s like having an immortal life. Who doesn’t want this kind of superpower? Lastly, what about this political power? Every human being is political since politics is about how to deal with your life and its surroundings such as society you belong to. In our everyday language, we may find ourselves using the term church politics and so on. Don’t we have this desire to have a charismatic political power that everyone just listens to you and agrees with you? Think about having this power to restructure all the social problems we are encountering and remove all the corrupted politicians and government officials. I think it’s crucial that we are able to resonate with the temptations that Jesus is facing in the desert. They’re not just his temptations. They’re ours too. We might be inclined to one or the other. Some might have a stronger desire for wealth. Others might be more inclined to religious power or political power. What matters is to see our own shadows. To do so, there are two steps to take. First, honestly ask yourself what your deepest desires are for yourself and others. What is that you really want from you and others? You might have certain expectations for yourself and certain self-images you would like to become. You might have certain expectations for others, such as what you would like others to do for you, and certain images you would like to see in others. It’s fine to have all these expectations and images you create. How can you not as a human being? But the problem is when you have no idea what they are and the worst problem is when you don’t even know that you have them and that you’re so attached to them. Jesus himself knows what expectations and images he has for himself. He knows he has this desire to become an economic alchemist who can turn stones into loaves of bread. He knows he has this religious and spiritual desire to show off how holy he is. He knows he has this desire to be politically influential with good intentions for others. Yet, he also knows that these are all but his shadows as long as he is not set free from those desires, as long as he is attached to these shadows. As he looks directly at his own shadows, shadows are just shadows. They do not consume him. They do not become him. He is not dominated by his own shadows. The light of the Holy Spirit sheds upon him that all his desires, even if they are good intentions for his neighbors, disappear. There’s no more shadow because the light of the Holy Spirit is directly overhead like there’s no shadow at noon when the sun is directly overhead. What are your shadows? Do you recognize what they are? Where are you spiritually? Can you see if you’re consumed by your own shadows or not? During this Lenten season, see what your shadows are. What are you so attached to? Is it a certain self-image you want to become? Is it your expectation of others that you would like them to become who you want them to be? Is it a certain kind of situation that you would like it to be? See for yourself your own desires. Accept what they are since they are a part of you. They are shadows. Shadows exist as long as you exist. But let us not forget that when the light of the Holy Spirit is directly above you like the son being directly overhead, your shadows are no longer there. How do we remain in this place of the light of God directly overhead? You find that light within. No more thoughts or images or feelings to be attached to. Just you and God alone. Go deeper in yourself. Gaze upon yourself in God as well as God in you. Jesus shows us two things. One is to model for us to face our own shadows. The other is to show us to throw our shadows into the living flame of love, God. His words take us to the place where we can see God in ourselves, where no desires or attachments exist,. “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. God, our eternal love, let your love pierce and wound our ego so that we see you in us and others. Amen.
It might be a bit redundant to go over all the lessons we heard this morning, and I wouldn’t do this very often. But I think it’s worthwhile to read them again. I’m not going to read all the verses but a few that might directly have an impact on us. First from the Wisdom of Sirach: "If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given...He [God] has not commanded anyone to be wicked, and he has not given anyone permission to sin." As you can see, the teaching of Sirach is not too hard to understand. We’re given a free will to choose. We have a free will to keep the commandments. We have a free will to act faithfully. We can choose between fire and water. We can choose between life and death. While God has given us a free will, we are to make a right choice that is not wicked or sinful. God commands us to make a choice that is aligned with God’s will. Yet, God cannot force us to make that choice. It’s to be done on our own willingly out of our own desire, never coercively. Most importantly, whatever choice we make, we are responsible for that choice. Let’s look at some verses from Psalm 119 we recited together: "Happy are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Happy are they who observe his decrees and seek him with all their hearts. Who never do any wrong, but always walk in his ways…” While we can easily see that the point of this psalm is to keep the law of God, it also says something that might interest us, which is about happiness. If you want to be happy, walk in the way of the Lord and seek God with all your hearts. Again, the heart of the psalmist’s teaching is to walk in the way of God, keep God’s commandments. Let’s skip Paul and go to Jesus. Jesus goes way further than the teachings of Sirach and psalmist. He mentions about one of the Ten Commandments that you shall not murder. For him, this isn’t enough. It’s not even a bare minimum. He asks more from his followers. So he says: "...if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny." Now, after listening to these lessons, how do they make you feel in your hearts? I hope you don’t say “Nothing!” All these lessons should actually trouble us, and their function is supposed to bother us or make us feel uneasy. We might feel like they trigger too much guilt in us for what we do not do for others. They indeed do, but that’s not everything. I would like us to carefully and mindfully pay attention to your hearts. Before getting caught in that thought of judgment of yourselves, then of guilt, there’s a movement of our conscience that responds to the lessons we have heard this morning. The conscience is the divine sensor built in our souls that detects what ought to be done or knows what God wills in situations where we need to choose and act. The conscience is not just personal but communal in that it always prompts us to take action for others. As I was reflecting on today’s lessons given to us, I found myself brushing off all these teachings of what we ought to do. It’s too moralistic or even legalistic. I’m sure I’m not the only person who experiences this sense of resistance or restraining forces when heard of what ought to be done or all the rules and restrictions we are urged to keep. We can so easily pick and choose what we want to hear from Jesus or from the Bible. But this morning, we are challenged to go beyond this restraining force in order to truly get what Jesus means. Also, let’s remember that Jesus said to his followers that not one letter or one stroke of a letter in the law will disappear. Let’s stay with that discomfort that we experience from hearing all the lessons of what we must do, all the commandments of God, Jesus’s command to reconcile with our sisters and brothers who have something against us before offering anything to the altar. What it does to us is to help us sense that the Spirit is talking to us through our conscience. It’s reactivating the conscience. Feel your conscience reacting to all these teachings and wisdoms from Scriptures this morning. Let your conscience speak for itself. This is not an easy task. This pains our strong ego-consciousness. This ego-consciousness is what Paul calls “the flesh.” The flesh is the ego. This flesh, this ego is a barrier when it is self-interested, self-focused, so much prone to justify and defend oneself. It then disconnects our experience with God. I wouldn’t say it cuts us from God because nothing can do so. Yet, the flesh or the ego blinds us to see what’s beyond the flesh. It confuses us that there are only waves but no ocean in which waves dance tiding in and out, that there are only letters but no white background in which letters are only visible. This discomfort or resistance we feel inside when we hear what God calls us to do with our free will is our ego or the flesh being punctured or pierced. The flesh is being pierced or wounded. What is wounded is our ego or flesh. And there’s what’s not wounded, which is our oneness with God or our divine nature in us. God is not some object to be analyzed, standing far away but we in God as well as God in us that there we discover this divine, perpetual union. Without this pain of the ego, which is the mystical death of the flesh, we simply remain as the people of the flesh, not spiritual people or the people of the Spirit. There is this short story: The lover knocked at the door of his beloved. “Who knocks?” said the beloved within. “It is I,” said the lover. “Go away. This house will not hold you and me.” The rejected lover went away into the desert. There he meditated for months on end, pondering the words of the beloved. Finally he returned and knocked at the door again. “Who knocks?” “It is you.” The door was immediately opened. (Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird, pp. 99-100) This puncturing of the conscience is like the lover’s experience of rejection. But through this wound, he can enter the house of his beloved, being one with his beloved. There are no two individuals but one union in love. My friends, do you believe what Paul says about you in the second lesson that you’re God’s field and God’s temple. You are where God happens in this world. For us to take care of God’s field and to build God’s temple, this awakening of the conscience must happen. And this process of our conscience being awake involves the mystical death of the flesh, or the ego being wounded through by the divine love. Some mystics call this mystical experience the “wound of love.” There’s a beautiful saying about this wound of love in the statutes of the Carthusian Order: “Here is acquired that eye, By whose serene gaze the Spouse is wounded with love; That eye, pure and clean, by which God is seen.” (Statutes of the Carthusian Order I.6.16) Keep your conscience awake. Feel that awakening pain, the wound of love, which becomes that eye, pure and clean, by which God is seen, by which our eternal oneness with God is experienced, by which our neighbors as well as our enemies are seen. Let that wound of love burn your ego, be consumed by that living flame of love. Then, we will truly get what Augustine meant when he said, “Love and do what you wish.” In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN. Is there anyone here feeling so much pressure after hearing Jesus’s words about what we are as well as Prophet Isaiah’s rebuking words about what we ought to do. Isaiah’s saying can be summarized in Martin Luther’s famous saying, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does!.” It’s simply, “Do the right thing for those in need, and only then God will answer you!” His criticism of Israel for its deceiving acts that do not reflect God’s love and justice seems to be relevant to our time. We as Christians gotta do the right thing if we really want God to answer and help us. I’m sure there’s no one here who will deny this call to do the right thing for justice is what God wills, but the real problem we face is our seemingly impossible nature of doing it or our lack of competency or desire to do it. Another saying of Jesus that presses us down even more is “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” We might want to correct Jesus that he is the salt of the earth and the light of the world, not us. We might not want to take his words into our hearts, but the truth is that he really means what he says about us.
Then we might want to ask ourselves at least the following two questions. 1) Why don’t I feel like I can be the salt of the earth and the light of the world? I feel like I don’t have any useful saltiness that can make things tasty. I don’t see any light in my life. It’s just so mundane, and there’s nothing particularly bright. The other question is, 2) how can I become the salt and the light? How can I live up to Jesus’s expectation of me? How can I do the thing Isaiah urges the people of Israel to do for mercy and justice? I like to believe I am asking the real questions we are struggling in our lives as Christians. We want to do the right thing but we don’t seem to do it. We have this desire to do it but don’t seem to have a strong will and determination to actually take action. We want to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world but our presence neither tastes like salt nor radiates any light in this dark world we live in. Now we might be quite discouraged by this reality, yet there’s always a way out. We must change the way we think of our faith as well as ourselves. We first have to accept that we have no capability to do the right thing, that is, the will of God, on our own without faith. This faith is the faith St. Paul talks about in our second lesson today. This faith depends on the power of God, not on mere human wisdom or knowledge. This is the type of faith that seems foolish to the world. It is unseen, unheard of, and inconceivable among people without faith. This faith is not about believing in certain doctrines or theories but about experiencing God that goes beyond our thoughts, feelings, and senses within and without. In this encounter with God, we experience the power of God, or to say correctly God Itself, the unseen, the unheard, the inconceivable, the unborn, yet revealed in Christ through the Spirit. Without this reality in us, we cannot have the faith that rests on the power of God. This explains why we can’t live like the salt of the earth and the light of the world. So,it’s unfair that you blame yourself for not doing the right thing. You never had the ability or power of God to do the work of God. Now knowing this, what are we going to do? First, we want to have this faith. We want to experience God within us. We want to meet God who waits for us so that God can reveal Itself but this only happens until our minds are empty. When our thoughts and feelings fall away, what is left is God in whom we live, move, have, and are one. From this oneness with God, we gain our strength to do the right thing. In our union with God, we bring our saltiness to the earth and shed light on the darkness of the world. Rather than having our ego-consciousness clutter and block the access to God’s presence in us, we need to be constantly mindful and aware of this state of being one with God. It’s not something completely unreachable but something that has never ever left us since it is simply this sense of being and existing like we never stopped breathing. And this something is God’s oneness with us that still goes on even when our breathing stops. When something is too subtle and easy, we take it for granted and consider it irrelevant. But our Christian spirituality calls us to pay attention to that subtle, quiet sense we always have, which is being there, being myself, existing as I am. This week, I came across a thought-provoking and eye-opening definition of spirituality. It’s Sister Elaine MacInnes’s simple yet powerful description. She says, “Spirituality is what you do with those fires that burn with you.” The fires that burn with you are the living flame of God’s love, which is our fuel to do the right thing. Discovering the divine fires that burn within us leads us to do the will of God for those who are oppressed, hungry, homeless, poor, naked, and afflicted. My friends, let the Holy Spirit, the breath of God breathe through you. Let the living flame of love within you burn what’s distorted in you and in this world and radiate and shine before those suffering. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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