9/3/2023 - 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

CALLING OUT THE SATAN IN EACH OF US
In the Gospel text of today – which is the continuation of last Sunday’s, when Jesus asked the disciples: “Who do you say I am”, and Peter made that powerful claim: ‘You are the messiah, the Son of the living God” – Jesus continues to talk about His impending suffering and death.  For the disciples this is unacceptable. There is doom for their aspirations for power and their ride to fame will have a short-fuse end. In their understanding – as it is perhaps in our own expectations – happiness is the absence of suffering.  Peter once again becomes their spokesperson: “Heaven preserve You Lord, this must not happen to You” (Mt 16: 22).  And Jesus has to make a strong and convincing statement: “Get behind me, Satan” (Mt 16:23)! This is tough language. Christ is calling out the ‘satan’ (alluring evil attraction) in Peter! Only this confrontation with evil will pave the way for God’s plan to be fulfilled.

To understand this process within us, we must look at this fascinating insight through the lens of the First Reading. “You have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced; you have overpowered me; you were the stronger” (Jer 20:7).  

St. Augustine, addressing God in the Soliloquies, said: "I did not find You without, Lord, because I wrongly sought You without, who were within." The Carmelite mystic John of the Cross sings in his Spiritual Canticle "Where have You hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning? You fled like the stag after wounding me; I went out calling You, but You were gone."

A little closer to our own times, in 1893 the English poet Francis Thompson in the 182-line poem The Hound of Heaven wrote: “I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him down the arches of the years; I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind and in the mist of tears I hid from Him and under running laughter up vistaed hopes I sped; and shot, precipitated, adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, from those strong feet that followed, followed after . . .”

Here in these texts, we have a definition of Spirituality as letting ourselves be seduced by God. That which is beautiful always attracts us human beings. Yes, God is beautiful and He draws us to Himself. Yet these mystics speak about a deception. We as human beings must accept the visible beauty of the butterfly and also the beauty hidden in the ugliness of the caterpillar.

Further along this pathway of spirituality another distinction must be made.  Psychologists today differentiate between two types of positive inner states (affective states): enjoyment and gratification.  Enjoyment is the immediate feeling of euphoria associated with pleasure.  Gratification is often a deeper and delayed satisfaction. Enjoyment is related to the external senses; gratification is basically internal. Enjoyment could be immediate and intense but could also disappear quickly.  Whereas gratification is a plateau experience that provides enduring meaning in life. In our soul’s encounter with God, the quick satiation of hunger for enjoyment is often not met but a lasting satisfaction that comes even through pain. Christ gave us the metaphor of the seed that undergoes the burial of being planted in the mud and the death of the seed and then the beauty of the new plant that comes to life.

So, it is with discipleship according to Paul. “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may judge what is God’s will.” We live in an age when, by all cultural accounts, our Christian faith is foolish. Our liturgies are weirdly transcendent. The procrastination of “the instant high” seems too unbearable. Our vows appear to be unkeepable promises, especially the part, ‘till death do us part’, our sacraments strange rituals. The practices we aspire to are held in high suspicion by the secular world.

Here in our path of Christian spirituality, once again the wisdom of the Creator shines through. God has a plan for each of us and we matter immensely to Him. Despite our million false starts and failures, God will embrace us into intimacy when we return. God’s delays are not denials, and our present darkness might be from our choosing to dwell in the shadows of grief rather than move into His comforting light.  Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.