March 29, 2017
Wednesday, Lent Week Four
Countering Phariseeism
The Responsorial (Psalm 145) reminds
us that "the Lord is kind and merciful." In contrast,
“Phariseeism” is legalism: a focus on rules with desire to enforce them for others. It is never joyful, never nurturing, never loving. There is always underlying anger in it. And unconscious resentment, which surfaces in anger against those who are not rule-bound. Paul fought the “false believers” who “slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us.”[1]
Phariseeism feeds on fear. And a sense of rejection. And
unacknowledged anger at abandonment. We don’t say, but we feel, “The Lord has
forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” Without the intimacy of personal
interaction with God, we fall back on the impersonal relationship of rules. We
will “save ourselves” without his help. We will keep the rules so strictly that
our “righteousness” will be our refuge.
Isaiah
49: 8-15 counters this by describing God’s closeness and saving love. “In a
time of favor I answer you... I help you.” God addresses those whose sense of
isolation from him has locked them into the defensive posture of legalism:
“Saying to the prisoners: ‘Come out!’... For he who pities them leads them and
guides them beside springs of water.” Stop focusing on rules. Drink from the
spring of God’s own heart, revealed in his words. Read. Meditate. Pray. Don’t
be so afraid. Your fear of sin, in the absence of reliance on God, drives you
into the fortress-prison of rigid self-discipline. God will “cut a road”
through all that blocks you from him. He has not abandoned you.
Can a mother forget her
infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget, I will
never forget you.
In John 5: 17-30 Jesus
defends his own freedom against those who persecuted him for healing on the
Sabbath. He claims to be acting by a higher law: the law of union, of shared life with the Father
who acts with him, in him and through him: “The Son cannot do anything by
himself... only what he sees the Father doing”— and doing in him.
More: “Just as the Father possesses life in himself, so has he
granted it to the Son to have life in himself.” And Jesus can share this life with
humans: “The Son grants life to whom he wishes.... The one who hears my word...
possesses eternal life.”
The prophets claim to
act by the Light and Life of God within them. They can be deceived. But the
worst deception is to deny the prophetic gift entirely and trust in nothing but
slavish obedience to laws. This is to deny the faith. By Baptism we share in
the life of God. We are anointed, consecrated by God as “priests, prophets and
kings” (responsible stewards of his kingship). The fear that denies freedom to
let Christ act with us, in us and through us is darkness overshadowing faith.
Initiative: Be what you are: alive with the life of
God. Act in union with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments!