When you fast do not look gloomy like the
hypocrites. They put on long faces, etc.
Today Christ, the divine artist, molds and
fashions a spiritual man, a theological man, the inner self, as Paul calls him.
Physical man consists of body and soul. Metaphysical man is defined by genus
and species. Christian man is composed of nature and grace. In his treatise on
man today, Christ speaks not as a physical or metaphysical philosopher, but as
a theologian and moral philosopher. A man is born natural and physical. In
baptism he becomes supernatural and theological.
Moses spoke of the formation of the natural and
physical man when he wrote that man is made up of body and soul, flesh and
spirit, just as this world is also composed of heaven and earth, the corporeal
and spiritual, visible and invisible substances and natures: The Lord God
formed man out of the clay of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life, and so man became a living being. God formed his body and
breathed into him his soul, and so man consists of body and soul. Without a
body man would be an angel. Without a rational soul, he would be a brute
animal.
Christ, the creator of this spiritual and mystic
world which we call the Church, also requires both corporeal and spiritual
virtues for the formation of this spiritual and theological man. The corporeal
virtue is fasting. The spiritual virtues are humility: so that you may not
appear to be fasting; faith: except to your Father who is hidden; hope: and
your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you; love: where your treasure
is, there will your heart be; nobility of spirit: Do not store up for
yourselves treasures on earth… but store up treasure in heaven; spiritual
strength and purity of conscience: wash your face; the spiritual unction of the
Holy Spirit: anoint your head….
For this reason, the Lord compared the Church to a
vineyard rather than to that paradise where our first parents were placed. In
paradise there was no labor or sweat required to bear the day’s burden and the
heat. There was also no need, then, to tame the flesh or mortify the body,
because the flesh was obedient to the spirit like a humble handmaid to her
mistress, like Hagar to Sarah before she conceived Ishmael. But now the flesh
is in revolt, like Hagar after she had conceived Ishmael. She no longer wanted
to obey her mistress and instead despised her and coveted Sarah’s place as
mistress. Sarah, consequently, began to abuse her to maintain her own status.
Man then was like a well ordered city, a well
trained army. He was a perfectly tuned musical instrument; he was like the
finest clock. But sin threw everything into disarray. In paradise man held the
middle ground between the animals and the angels, like the dawn between the
night and the day; like the sky with its perfectly ordered movements between
earth’s elements and the empyrean. All man’s actions had a happy outcome,
whether they were the natural activities of the body or the more angelic and
divine activities of the spirit. Man might truly have been called an angel in
the flesh. He was like the finest knight, second to none in equestrian skills,
mounted on a superbly trained horse obedient to the slightest tug of bridle and
bit, like Alexander the Great astride his celebrated steed, Bucephalus.
But sin threw everything into confusion. Man when
he prospers forfeits intelligence. He is compared to senseless beasts and
becomes like them, transformed into a beast like King Nebuchadnezzar. The
natural person does not accept what pertains to the spirit of God. Then human
nature was like blessed soil which yielded its fruits for man without any labor
on his part. Now the land is cursed because of sin. It sprouts forth thorns and
thistles and only with great effort and sweat does it yield the necessities of
life. The vine needs careful pruning now, and needs to have a trench dug around
it that is filled with fertilizer in due season, or it will not bear fruit.
Today the Lord asks us to be prudent people, as
Paul says, who do not continue in ignorance but try to understand what is the
will of the Lord, to discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing
and perfect. He wants to see us endowed with keen and right judgment, with
neither a perverted nor inverted sense of values, lest we become like those who
call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness into light, and light into
darkness, who change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter. The Lord seeks a
people undefiled by vices, but endowed and adorned with virtues. Lives there
such a man who does not want others to think and speak well of him, who is not
upset by some evil mark or remark levied against him? Even criminals detained
in prison constantly profess their innocence and want others to concur in their
opinion. They know that once their innocence is discounted, they have nothing
to look forward to except continued incarceration or the galley of a slave
ship. God desires us to be truly rich, truly noble, endowed with a lofty spirit
and generous heart so that we will spurn the worthless goods of earth and
strive only for those of heaven.
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