‘Last temptation’
In December we celebrate the birth of the Baby with all the joy and hoopla of parenthood. Dec. 25 is not one day but the highlight of a season of joy. We exchange gifts, put on our best clothes, share a part of ourselves with overflowing charity and compassion. Then we welcome the new year with fireworks, noise, and a list of high hopes and dream projects to undertake.
Three months later we switch to a somber mood, going to church for totally different reasons, but mostly to remind ourselves of our sinful nature as we pray to an everloving God who will forgive us our sins, probably the same recidivist ones, but better if He would simply forget those sins and shortcomings, forget our lack of faith, hope, and charity.
One of the landmark books of fiction of the last century, in my limited view, was The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis, in which the novelist imagined Jesus Christ, the God who became man, suffering the pain of anticipating his death by crucifixion, which was the Roman conquerors’ way of dealing with rebels and criminals. As God, Christ could have changed his mind and escaped punishment, but as a man he could only beg his Father,
“Why have you forsaken me? ...Let this cup pass from me.”
On the night of Spy Wednesday, after the treachery of Judas Iscariot who had sold his master for 30 pieces of silver, there was time to make a quick escape from the garden of Gethsemane, or what’s a god for? But Jesus overcame the temptation and willingly let himself be taken away to be tortured, whipped, lashed, flayed, insulted, stripped naked before being hung on the cross, there to be killed three hours later by a Roman centurion. (Some years before the 21st century, a nun produced in detail a list of the sufferings of Christ, adding what she called the 13 secret tortures inflicted on his body, mind, and spirit.)
Does the story explain why non-christians, agnostics and atheists think Catholics practice their religion “out of a sense of guilt”?
Let us listen to the sermons this Holy Week: The sin is not in owning up to the guilt but in despair.