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Pope Benedict
XVI- Speeches & Other Writings |
"That Which is Most Important"
The Temptations of Christ, World Hunger, Politics, and God
Pope Benedict XVI
Excerpted from his book, Jesus of Nazareth
Matthew and Luke recount three temptations of Jesus that reflect the
inner struggle over his own particular mission and, at the same
time, address the question as to what truly matters in human life.
At the heart of all the temptations, as we see here, is the act of
pushing God aside because we perceive him as secondary, if not
actually superfluous and annoying, in comparison with all the
apparently far more urgent matters that fill our lives. Constructing
a world by our own lights, without reference to God, building our
own foundation; refusing to acknowledge the reality of anything
beyond the political and material, while setting God aside as an
illusion – that is the temptation that threatens us in many varied
forms.
Moral posturing is part and parcel
of temptation. It does not invite us directly to do evil – no, that
would be far too blatant. It pretends to show us a better way, where
we finally abandon our illusions and throw ourselves into the work
of actually making the world a better place. It claims, moreover, to
speak for true realism: What’s real is what is right there in front
of us – power and bread. By comparison, the things of God fade into
unreality, into a secondary world that no one really needs.
God is the issue: Is he real,
reality itself, or isn’t he? Is he good, or do we have to invent
good ourselves? The God question is the fundamental question, and it
sets us down right at the crossroads of human existence. What must
the Savior of the world do or not do? That is what the temptations
of Jesus are all about…
… “If you are the Son of God,
command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Mt 4:3) – so the
first temptation goes. “If you are the Son of God” – we will hear
these words again in the mouths of the mocking bystanders at the
foot of the Cross…Mockery and temptation blend into each other hear:
Christ
is being challenged to establish his credibility by offering
evidence for his claims. This demand of proof is a constantly
reoccurring theme in the story of Jesus’ life…
…And we make this same demand of
God and Christ and his Church throughout the whole of history. “If
you exist, God,” we say, “then you'll just have to show yourself…”
…The proof of divinity that the
tempter proposes at the first temptation consists in changing the
stones of the desert into bread…
…Is there anything more tragic, is
there anything more opposed to belief in the existence of a good God
and Redeemer of mankind, than world hunger? Shouldn’t it be the
first test of the Redeemer, before the world’s gaze and on the
world’s behalf, to give it bread and to end all hunger? During their
wandering through the desert, God fed the people of Israel with
bread from heaven, with manna. This seemed to offer a privileged
glimpse into how things would look when the Messiah came: Did not,
and does not, the Redeemer of the world have to prove his
credentials by feeding everyone? Isn’t the problem of feeding the
world – and, more generally, are the social problems – the primary,
true yardstick by which redemption has to be measured? Does someone
who fails to measure up to this standard have any right to be called
a redeemer? Marxism – quite understandably – made this very point
the core of its promise of salvation: It would see to it that no one
went hungry anymore and that the “desert would become bread.”
“If you are the Son of God” – what
a challenge! And should we not same the same to the Church? If you
claim to be the Church of God, then start by making sure the world
has bread – the rest comes later. It is hard to answer this
challenge, precisely because the cry of the hungry penetrates so
deeply into the ears and into the soul – as well it should. Jesus’
answer cannot be understood in the light of the temptation story
alone. The bread motif pervades the entire Gospel and has to be
looked at in its full breadth.
There are two other great
narratives concerning bread in Jesus’ life. The first is the
multiplication of loaves for the thousands who followed the Lord
when he withdrew to a lonely place. Why does Christ now do the very
thing he had rejected as a temptation before? The crowds had left
everything in order to come hear God’s word. They are people who
have opened their heart to God and to one another; they are
therefore ready to receive the bread with the proper disposition.
This miracle of the loaves has three aspects, then. It is preceded
by a search for God, for his word, for the teaching that sets the
whole of life on the right path. Furthermore, God is asked to supply
the bread. Finally, readiness to share with one another is an
essential element of the miracle. Listening to God becomes living
with God, and leads from faith to love, to the discovery of the
other. Jesus is not indifferent toward men’s hunger, their bodily
needs, but he places these things in the proper content and the
proper order.
This second narrative concerning
bread thus points ahead to, and prepares for, the third: the Last
Supper, which becomes the Eucharist of the Church and Jesus’
perpetual miracle of bread. Jesus himself has become the grain of
wheat that died and brought forth much fruit (cf. Jn 12:24). He
himself has become bread for us, and this multiplication of
the loaves endures to the end of time, without ever bring depleted.
This gives us the background we need if we are to understand what
Jesus means when he cites the Old Testaments in order to repel the
tempter: “Man does not live by bread alone, but…by everything that
proceeds from the mouth of the Lord” (Duet 8:3). The German Jesuit
Alfred Delp, who was executed by the Nazis, once wrote: “Bread is
important, freedom is more important, but most important of all is
unbroken fidelity and faithful adoration.”
When this ordering of goods is no
longer respected, but turned on its head, the result is not justice
or concern for human suffering. The result is rather ruin and
destruction even of material goods themselves. When God is regarded
as a secondary matter that we can set aside temporarily or
permanently on account of more important things, it is precisely
these supposedly more important things that come to nothing. It is
not just the negative outcome of the Marxist experience that proves
this.
The aid offered by the West to
developing countries has been purely technical and materially based,
and not only has left God out of the picture, but has driven men
away from God. And this aid, proudly claiming to “know better,” is
itself what first turned the “third world” into what mean today by
that term. It has thrust aside indigenous religious, ethical, and
social structures and filled the resulting vacuum with its
technocratic mind-set. The idea was that we could turn stones into
bread; instead, our “aid” has only given stones in place of bread.
The issue is the primacy of God. The issue is acknowledging that he
is a reality, that he is the reality without which nothing else can
be good. History cannot be detached from God and then run smoothly
on purely material lines. If man’s heart is not good, then nothing
else can turn out good, either. And the goodness of the human heart
can ultimately come only from the One who goodness, who is the Good
itself.
Of course, one can still ask why
God did not make a world in which his presence is more evident – why
Christ did not leave the world with another sign of his presence so
radiant that no one could resist it. This is the mystery of God and
man, which we find so inscrutable. We live in this world, where God
is not so manifest as tangible things are, but can be sought and
found only when the heart sets out on the “exodus” from “Egypt.” It
is in the this world that we are obliged to resist the
delusions of false philosophies and to recognize that we do not live
be bread alone, but first and foremost by obedience to God’s world.
Only when this obedience is put into practice does the attitude
develop that is also capable of providing bread for all.
Excerpted from Jesus of Nazareth
(2007, Ignatius Press), pages 28-34
Look at the One they
Pierced!
