Gospel Reflection For The 18th day of February in the year of Our Lord, 2024
The 18th day of February in the year of Our Lord, 2024
Gospel
Mark 1:12-15
12 And immediately the Spirit drove him out into the desert. 13 And he was in the desert forty days and forty nights, and was tempted by Satan; and he was with beasts, and the angels ministered to him. 14 And after that John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying: The time is accomplished, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the gospel.
Why would Jesus be tempted by the Satan? Or, better yet, how could God incarnate be tempted at all? We must remember that Jesus was and is both fully God and fully human. Of course, God could not be tempted at all because God is perfect and the author of truth. But, Jesus became man to redeem man. To become man, He had to lower or humble Himself beyond anything we can imagine. The Creator became the created. The perfect had to take on our fallen nature. That means that our Lord allowed Himself to be just as weak and vulnerable to all temptations as are we.
In ways we cannot even imagine, He even allowed Himself to be placed in a position where the devil had more power than He did. Yes, he was fully God and could have asserted His authority over evil with merely a word. But, He did not. He allowed Himself to be assaulted spiritually just as He would allow Himself to be tortured and killed by men who had far less power than “the king of this world”, who is Satan. We have no supernatural powers. We can not influence the minds of men or possess them with evil spirits. The devil can and does.
The humility and meekness of our Lord is something very hard for us to understand. As the Bible says, a man may willingly die for a good man or a good cause. Jesus died for the very worst among us. Today’s first reading concerns the covenant of God not only with Moses and humanity, but all nature. All nature suffers death and degeneration due to the Original Sin of our first parents. Jesus came not only to redeem every man and woman, but every insect, animal and plant. Yes, Jesus’ sacrificial death for our sins means that not only is His love for each one of us so great that He would submit Himself to torture and death, but His love for every element of creation was such that He would humble and sacrifice Himself even for a worm.
When we think of our sins and feel so worthless and unlovable, we must remember this. Jesus loves us all, murderers, the poor and abandoned, even every sparrow and the lilies of the field. Yes, even me when I cannot even bear to look in the mirror. Further, the Bible says that God loves man much more than animals, plants, etc. His infinite love and compassion is incomprehensible, but as real as the wood of the cross. He willingly suffered all the evil and hatred of man and the devil for you and for me. The profundity of this mystery is more than I will ever be able to comprehend.
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Gospel passages are taken from the Douay Rheims Bible.