Pope Francis wisely begins his First Lenten Message by asking us to focus on Christ. In particular, the Pontiff asks us to contrast the wealth of Christ with the poverty of Christ. “Jesus’ wealth lies in his being the Son,” the Pontiff tells us: “his unique relationship with the Father” is what makes Him rich. By contrast, Christ’s poverty “is his way of loving us” by suffering for our cause. We could add a third facet, which would be Christ’s act of “emptying himself,” stripping himself of his godly grandeur to be incarnate among us. Archbishop Romero gives us three visions of Christ that illuminate this point.
THE
TRANSFIGURATION
The wealth of Christ, centered on his role as the Son in
unique relationship with the Father is revealed in the Gospel account of His
Transfiguration. In addition to being
one of the first Lent readings, the episode is the basis for El Salvador’s
national patronal feast and thus, Romero had been preaching on the
Transfiguration since the 1950s. When
Jesus lets us glimpse a flash of the radiant light he emanates, and the voice
from the clouds says, “This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 17:5), Romero preaches, Jesus is
letting us in on the secret of His divinity, as well as giving us a foretaste
of the heavenly glory to which all men are destined as Children of God. The wealth of Jesus is a shared inheritance,
because this glorification for the Son of God is the dignity that God wants for
all His children, and symbolizes the perfection attained when man is elevated
above the terrestrial realm and held up in the celestial plane, free of all
temptation and sin. In fact, Romero
says, the image of Jesus thus exalted is the perfect icon of liberation and he
goes as far as to call his preaching “Transfiguration Theology” rather than
Liberation Theology because it is premised on a transcendent, spiritual
emancipation.
CHRIST
FASTING IN THE DESERT
The other image of Christ from the readings of Lent
portrays Christ entering the desert to fast and pray for forty days and forty
nights. Importantly, Christ rejects the
temptations of power, success and domination presented by Satan, embracing hunger,
obscurity and insignificance, and thus running the same fate as the poor. This is the poverty of Christ, and it is
presented in rich symbolism to highlight the importance of this feature as a
central characteristic of Christ. Romero
points out that the length of time Jesus spends in the desert—forty days and
forty nights—holds great theological significance in the Hebrew Bible. After all, Moses led the Israelites for forty
years in the desert in search of the promise land, and forty days was the term
that Elijah spent in his spiritual quest.
Accordingly, when Jesus later appears atop Mt. Tabor surrounded by Moses
and Elijah (see previous point about The Transfiguration), it is to confirm
Jesus as God’s chosen prophet. In fact,
Romero points out, in entering the desert, Jesus also figures as the New Adam,
by contrast, the Garden of Eden juxtaposed against this forbidding place of
wild beasts and the dead, which will bloom as a sacred garden because of Jesus’
radiant spirituality, his holy poverty.
CHRIST
DESCENDING FROM THE MOUNTAIN
The third, implied scene is the one that symbolizes the
deliberate option by Christ to side with us, to be one of us. For Romero, it is Jesus descending from the
high place, where He communes alone with God the Father. “The
gospels use beautiful expressions that describe some profound ways of seeing
Jesus,” Romero tells
us. “Let us
behold Jesus as He comes down the mountain, as He comes down from the heights
to mingle with the people” down in the valley. The Spanish words Romero uses to express this
idea are powerful: he literally says Jesus comes down to let himself be confused with the commonality of mankind. In essence, Christ not only enters history,
He blends in. Consequently, Romero tells
us, “we cannot separate the context of
Jesus’ words from the whole history of Israel.” And by extension, we cannot interpret Jesus
without allowing His teachings to infiltrate the history and context of every
place where His gospel is heard. When He
empties Himself, Jesus makes himself accessible to all of us.
The poverty of Jesus enriches us, because in making
Himself poor to walk alongside us, Christ also shares His wealth, the spiritual
treasure of His Kingdom.
Next: poverty as a valued spiritual trait in the Church.
Next: poverty as a valued spiritual trait in the Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment