THE RADICAL POVERTY OF CHRIST DWELLING IN US

Our five week journey through Lent has perhaps held Spirit-blessed treasures. 

We may have been blessed to recognize that many of our human weaknesses have become uncloaked and hidden in them, the spiritual pride that estranges us from God may have been exposed; God's gift of humility may have begun to nurture a contrite heart and we have bent the knee in obedience; being subject to temptations may have gradually revealed to us the reality of our profound poverty in our world arena where having and being in control fills the tabernacle of our self; and we may have been graced at last with the desire to surrender our all into God's love.

Weakness: humility: obedience: temptations: poverty: surrender.

This may have been the story of our encounter with ourselves during our Lent this far. 

This was the Story of Christ Jesus' encounter with Satan in the desert, an encounter that was the prelude to the coming week which opens with Passion Sunday.

Christ's willing Weakness in His Sacred Humanity incurred the devil's assault on the Lord's Humility;

the devil's continued assault on Christ's Obedience to His gift to His Father of total Self-renunciation; 

the devil's strategized temptations against the Lord's radical poverty;

the devil's continued assaults on Christ's chosen and complete surrender to a total impoverishment held in His Sacred Humanity.

These reveal to us the Story of the Lord's Temptations in the Desert ...

He surrendered His Glory to become weak in His Sacred Humanity; 

He personified       Humility; 

                               Obedience;

                               Poverty. 

                                

Our own story of Lent holds the same...

                                       

            weakness; humility; obedience; poverty; surrender.

                                 Our Savior's Story holds our story.

"When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him, for a time"  (Lk 4:1-13).

                              ".... FOR A TIME". 

                            

                                Holy Week is that time. 

During Holy Week, all hell finally released its utter hatred for the One Who had vanquished the devil's  temptations in the desert. Evil had waited for thirty-three years to despoil, mock, destroy the self-renunciation of our Savior. It is through His choice of total Self-renunciation that Jesus redeems us. 

He clothed Himself with the "dark robes of our frailty," with the utter poverty of our weak humanity.

Satan assaulted that radical poverty because in that choice of uncompromising poverty, our poverty, the Lord Jesus became utterly poor. 

"To become human means to become 'poor', to have nothing that one might brag about before God. To become human means to have no support, no power ... Jesus held back nothing. He clung to nothing, and nothing served as a shield for him": 

"Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself" (Phil 2:6).

Satan despises this poverty, weakness, this humility, this obedience, this surrender to love because the devil has the deepest fear of virtues that he cannot fight.

This is Christ's Mighty Powerlessness. 

And when we allow Him to dwell in us, He becomes our Might in our powerlessness. 

When we humbly acknowledge our human frailty, our finiteness, our lack of control, our sinfulness, we allow Christ's power to work within us. 

And Spirit Lord speaks to our souls when we read and respond to the words of St. Paul:

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong." (2 Cor 12: 9-11)

Perhaps in our prayer this holy week, we might sit with this reflection from Johann Baptist Metz :

    "Have we really understood the impoverishment that Christ endured? Everything was taken from him during the passion, even the love that drove him to the cross. No longer did he savor his own love, no longer did he feel any spark of enthusiasm. His heart gave out and a feeling of utter helplessness came over him. Truly he emptied himself (Phil 2:7). God's merciful hand no longer sustained him. God's countenance was hidden during the passion and Christ gaped into the darkness of nothingness and abandonment where God was no longer present. He reached his destiny, stretched taut between a despising earth that had rejected him and a faceless heaven thundering God's 'NO' to sinful humanity. Jesus paid the price of futility." 

                                     And the Savior asks only this of us:

             "Couldn't you keep watch with me even for one hour?" (Mk 14:37)