Wednesday, February 21, 2007
“…BUT BY PRAYER AND FASTING” #2
Why is death and death alone the absolute condition of that which exists? The Church answers: because man rejected life as it was offered and given to him by God and preferred a life depending not on God alone but on “bread alone.” Not only did he disobey God for which he was punished; he changed the very relationship between himself and the world. To be sure, the world was given to him by God as “food” as means of life; yet life was meant to be communion with God; it had not only its end but its full content in him. “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” The world and food were thus created as means of communion with God, and only if accepted for God’s sake were to give life. …God –and not calories- was the principle of life. Thus to eat, to be alive, to know God and be in communion with Him were one and the same thing.
The unfathomable tragedy of Adam is that he ate for its own sake. More than that, he ate “apart” from God in order to be independent of Him. And if he did it, it is because he believed that food had life in itself and that he, by partaking of that food could be like God, i.e., have life in himself. To put it very simply: he believed in food whereas the only object of belief, of faith, of dependence is God and God alone. World, food, became his gods, the sources and principles of his life. He became their slave. Adam –in Hebrew- means “man.” It is my name, our common name. Man is still Adam, still the slave of “food.” He may claim that he believes in God, but God is not his life, his food, the all-embracing content of his existence… His science, his experience, his self-consciousness are all built on that same principle: “by bread alone.”
Christ is the New Adam. He comes to repair the damage inflicted on life by Adam, to restore man to true life, and thus He also begins with fasting. “When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He became hungry” (Matt. 4:2).
Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else –when we urgently and essentially need food- showing thus that we have no life in ourselves. It is that limit beyond which I either die from starvation or, having satisfied my body, have again the impression of being alive. It is, in other words, the time when we face the ultimate question: on what does my life depend? And, since the question is not an academic one but is felt with my entire body, it is also the time of temptation. Satan came to Adam in Paradise; he came to Christ in the desert. He came to two hungry men and said: eat, for your hunger is the proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed and ate; but Christ rejected that temptation and said: man shall not live by bread alone but by God. He refused to accept that cosmic lie which Satan imposed on the world, …that lie a self-evident truth not even debated any more, the foundation of our entire world view, of science, medicine, and perhaps even religion. By doing this, Christ restored that relationship between food, life, and God which Adam broke, and which we still break every day.
What then is fasting for us Christians? …Tomorrow’s reading
Why is death and death alone the absolute condition of that which exists? The Church answers: because man rejected life as it was offered and given to him by God and preferred a life depending not on God alone but on “bread alone.” Not only did he disobey God for which he was punished; he changed the very relationship between himself and the world. To be sure, the world was given to him by God as “food” as means of life; yet life was meant to be communion with God; it had not only its end but its full content in him. “In Him was life and the life was the light of men.” The world and food were thus created as means of communion with God, and only if accepted for God’s sake were to give life. …God –and not calories- was the principle of life. Thus to eat, to be alive, to know God and be in communion with Him were one and the same thing.
The unfathomable tragedy of Adam is that he ate for its own sake. More than that, he ate “apart” from God in order to be independent of Him. And if he did it, it is because he believed that food had life in itself and that he, by partaking of that food could be like God, i.e., have life in himself. To put it very simply: he believed in food whereas the only object of belief, of faith, of dependence is God and God alone. World, food, became his gods, the sources and principles of his life. He became their slave. Adam –in Hebrew- means “man.” It is my name, our common name. Man is still Adam, still the slave of “food.” He may claim that he believes in God, but God is not his life, his food, the all-embracing content of his existence… His science, his experience, his self-consciousness are all built on that same principle: “by bread alone.”
Christ is the New Adam. He comes to repair the damage inflicted on life by Adam, to restore man to true life, and thus He also begins with fasting. “When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He became hungry” (Matt. 4:2).
Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else –when we urgently and essentially need food- showing thus that we have no life in ourselves. It is that limit beyond which I either die from starvation or, having satisfied my body, have again the impression of being alive. It is, in other words, the time when we face the ultimate question: on what does my life depend? And, since the question is not an academic one but is felt with my entire body, it is also the time of temptation. Satan came to Adam in Paradise; he came to Christ in the desert. He came to two hungry men and said: eat, for your hunger is the proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food. And Adam believed and ate; but Christ rejected that temptation and said: man shall not live by bread alone but by God. He refused to accept that cosmic lie which Satan imposed on the world, …that lie a self-evident truth not even debated any more, the foundation of our entire world view, of science, medicine, and perhaps even religion. By doing this, Christ restored that relationship between food, life, and God which Adam broke, and which we still break every day.
What then is fasting for us Christians? …Tomorrow’s reading
# posted by Brian @ 10:17 PM 
