Our hearts are slow to trust God. Even though we remember when he gives us bread with the four thousand and the five thousand we still don't understand. Even though his providence is so great that there are seven and twelve baskets left over we still do not yet understand and comprehend. Our hearts are hardened. Our eyes do not see and our ears do not hear.
Our minds default to the materialism that surrounds us. Jesus talks about leaven and all we can think about is the bread we forgot this time. Jesus is trying to teach us, to draw our minds higher, but if we don't trust in his providential care we may twist his words to a meaning that addresses our immediate concern rather than his.
One situation in which we face temptation is when we are with Jesus but our bread is at home, forgotten. Yet we are called to persevere. We are tempted to the leaven of the Pharisees. We are tempted to ask for signs on our own terms, signs that fulfill our own purposes, which make Jesus sigh from the depths of his being. This leaven quickly pollutes the purpose of the true signs that Jesus gives. This leaven would make Jesus an earthly king (cf. Joh. 6:15), a bread king as Fulton Sheen calls the role in which the people would place Jesus:
The first temptation Christ had in the beginning of His public life was to become a bread King, and to win men by supplying them with food. On one occasion when they attempted to make Him King after multiplying the bread, He fled into the mountains. Rome once rang with the cry: "Bread and circuses." But the Bread that was brought at Bethlehem was an entirely different kind: "Not by bread alone does man live."The temptation of Christ in regard to his ministry is a temptation that we face in interpreting him. In order to not give in to this temptation we must do what James tells us: persevere! To persevere means that we don't allow the trials we face to change our image of God.
No one experiencing temptation should say,
“I am being tempted by God”;
for God is not subject to temptation to evil,
and he himself tempts no one.
He is the source of our daily bread. Yet he himself points to the higher bread that comes from doing the will of him who sent him (cf. 4:34). The leaven of the Pharisees keeps our minds earthbound, too worried about taking care of ourselves to truly open ourselves to trust in God. We must persevere, holding fast to the memory of his providence, clinging tightly to our knowledge of who he truly is.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers and sisters:
all good giving and every perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights,
with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.
This we must do because "when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death." This is a truth with which we are all too familiar, not just in a society which kills the unborn, but in our own individual hearts. We must persevere but we cannot do so with our own strength. Let us learn to trust in the LORD.
When I say, “My foot is slipping,”
your mercy, O LORD, sustains me;
When cares abound within me,
your comfort gladdens my soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment