In our readings today, there is a theme of submission and truth that we need to be very aware of. In our culture today, the word submission is not a popular one, we bristle at the notion. Yet, in terms of our Lord, it is a wholly appropriate position for us to take. This is the God of the universe who created all things, and who gave Himself for us, He is certainly deserving of our love and submission. Truth is another area that is in a state of turmoil for many in society. There are many who claim to subscribe to the truth, yet they make it a moving target to acquire since they claim it to be a relative value. This is both incorrect, and arrogant on the part of those who make this claim, as they are usually the same ones who try to promote their own version of what truth is. They may leave just enough of a veneer of actual truth to make their own message more palatable to others, but the end message is still just as corrupt, and such statements serve Satan’s purposes well.
Our Gospel today demonstrates just how this kind of relative truth can be used to achieve the agenda of someone whose motives are corrupt. Satan tries to tempt our Lord three times using what initially appears to be an innocent suggestion and ending up at the last even quoting scripture in an act of desperation to try to convince our Lord Jesus to break the most fundamental of God’s commands – to love, serve, and worship Him alone. This is the modus operandi that is still so prevalent today. Those who seek to corrupt the truth will start with requests for what initially appear to be benevolent and kind actions, and in the end, will try to press their agenda through any means necessary when they are either desperate enough or emboldened enough through previous successes in manipulating opinion that they no longer feel the need to maintain a veneer of propriety.
This past Wednesday evening, like many people I watched the president’s State of the Union address, and I liked much of what I heard, there seemed to be a genuinely caring interest in improving the lives of the people of this country. It was all sounding very good until at the end he felt compelled to bring up the topic of Roe v. Wade being under attack, and how there was a need to combat this to ensure that women’s rights to healthcare were maintained. He never actually used the term abortion in his comments, but instead tried to portray that piece of horrible legislation as something it is not – something beneficial and empowering to women. While it is true that some of the organizations involved which benefit from Roe v. Wade may also provide some token level of women’s healthcare services (which are also available from many other healthcare providers), to be sure, that is not their area of focus – they are primarily oriented toward profiting from the killing of children – period. The leader of this nation, and someone who professes to be a Catholic, inserted this fundamental lie into what was otherwise a grouping of very benevolent and appropriate agendas. Yet in the end, all the actual positive rhetoric was eclipsed by a lie that was about what is perhaps the greatest evil of our time, with the result being eighty million of the most vulnerable among dead so far, and who will never have the chance to benefit from any of the other positive agenda’s that were mentioned. This was a stark example of how corruptive manipulated truth can be destructive, but it is far from being an isolated instance. We are pelted every day with marketing that tries to drive us toward unnecessary debt, which will result in generating desperation to pay for it. This, in turn, drives us toward time and focus taken away from our families, time that could otherwise have been spent in loving and guiding those around us so that we promote and produce stability, love, and intimacy that will keep our families together and on a path toward producing quality members of society. We see other seemingly benevolent agendas put forth by those who sometimes claim oppression and begin by promoting what they term as simple acceptance and equality. To be sure, no one should be oppressed or compromised because of their personal beliefs. However, when that ask for basic human acceptance turns into a demand to have their particular agenda accepted as truth by all and then promoted as an accepted norm, we have crossed the line from the promotion of actual fairness and truth to the forcing of an agenda that is rooted in flawed human desire. This is the danger of depending on our own perception of truth, rather than submitting our own will to that of God and accepting the truth which has always existed, and which has been proven time and again to be truly infallible.
For all the effort that we put into developing our own ideologies to address the issues of our times, which is certainly a worthwhile use of the gift of intellect that has been granted us by our Creator, and which He rightly expects us to not waste. We still can’t seem to grasp the notion of humbly weighing all that we develop against what we know to be perfect in truth and to test our own limited capacity against that to prevent error. It is as if we feel they must remain mutually exclusive, which has never been the case and is an arrogance which only serves the enemy. We are children of God, and there is certainly nothing denigrating or condescending in that title. It is one of high honor and should never be viewed otherwise, as it tells us of a truly royal lineage. Yet as part of this lineage, we are still called to be humble enough to acknowledge our limitations, submit our uncertainties and ourselves, and follow a truth that we know to be perfect.
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The Deacons Bench 