Genesis 3: thoughts on the Readings of the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The great temptation of an authentic person is denial. Who told you that you are naked: Eve: the serpent is to blame… Adam: the woman is to blame…the woman YOU GOD gave me, so actually you, God, are at fault. Nobody wants to take responsibility. Nobody wants to look reality in the eye. They lie to themselves. Authentic people live the truth, which sets them free. Lies burden down. Keep emprisoned.
The author John Maxwell has a book called: “Great leaders ask great questions”. The path to recovery begins with a question: God probes into the wound. “Where are you?” „Where are you? Shouldn’t you, Adam, have kept the garden SAFE? Shouldn’t you have made sure that beast didn’t come into the garden at all, let alone allowing it go for coffee with your wife? And where were you when she was talking to the snake, the thing that could kill her and you?“
And why are you hiding now? It’s not as if Adam really believed God had no idea where to find him. And yet, it is this question, the question that lures us out of our hiding place, it is God´s question that brings us out from behind our backs to look at ourselves in the mirror, because that is where we had been hiding in order not to have to look at ourselves (to speak with St. Augustine, an early Christian thinker), because we were too ashamed. They were naked and ashamed. It is the loving call of the one who is serious about us, a call of love that allows us to look into the eyes of the infinitely loving Father again, his glance that wants to heal us.
The denial of guilt leads directly to a lack of authenticity, to an increase in fig leaves, to encapsulate our hearts inside of an armored safe. We lose contact not only with God, but also with ourselves and with others…usually especially with those we have loved the most, those who are particularly close to us. The lie leads us away from our true core self. There is a nice word for this in German: the ENT-FREMDUNG. Alienation. The lie leads us into a foreign place, a place where we are not at home, where we are no longer with ourselves.
But there is another level of missing authenticity. It is presented to us in the 2nd reading today:
It’s about staring at the visible as the only important and real, the fading out of the invisible, but also of eternity, our eternal destiny. Some would say that the basic assumptions of the Enlightenment are being increasingly put into question. Among other things, the assumption that man encounters and evaluates reality merely through the use of his intellect. He simply looks at things as they are, freeing himself from the great mythical precepts such as those of religion, and weighing things up rationally. But. It doesn’t work like that. I don’t simply evaluate reality “as it is”. But “Which part of reality”? Because I don’t even look at most of it. When I’m driving, I have to concentrate on the road and pretty much everything else fades into the background. There is a mental sickness that causes people to be overwhelmed by life because they can no longer manage to block out everything unimportant from the vast amount of information that is bombarding us at any given moment. Because I have a goal to focus my attention on, I can move around in the world at all.
To put it simply, we encounter the world through a story, a narrative, a basic narrative.
And some would say it’s sex. That’s Freud.
The others, increasingly, would say it’s power. Power structures. Even interpersonal relationships are just the manifestation of power relations.
Christians claim it is neither. Christians have a different story. It is called the Bible. It is called the story of God with mankind, it`s a love story. And it starts with Adam and Eve. The spirit hovered over the waters, over the unformed Caos. And this spirit is the spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of love.
In Genesis, God creates the world, the orderly cosmos. So history does not begin with arbitrariness. Not a repressed Eros, nor the will to power. But love. Things are given meaning because God creates order out of chaos. And this order is good. Very good, in fact, according to Genesis one. And that means that if I am good, then he who created me is good. He doesn’t have it in for me. He wants good for me. And there is forgiveness. Forgiveness. But man can respond with doubt. With a clenched fist. With rebellion.
The Adam and Eve story is yours and mine. It is the story of the temptation to fall out of authenticity, because it is the temptation to say: God, your order is not good. And so in the end I don’t know whether I am good, whether it is good that I exist myself.
The lack of authenticity has one last temptation: that of cynicism: “he casts out demons through the power of demons, he is possessed by a demon.” It is the elevation of oneself above reality, an arrogance that no longer has any reverence for the greater. Again, this reveals an alienation from the actual core of the self. It is the almost complete armoring against everything that could seem like a call from outside oneself into an order that is not self-made. The best way to do this is to make a mockery of this call.
The great temptation of against authenticity is denial. Authentic people are people of truth, which sets them free. The healing of the heart happens where we live in the truth (the truth will set you free). The healing of the heart is to submit to the order of the Father, and this requires the use of the will: “Mother and brother are those who DO the will of my Father”, but this in turn presupposes that what I say I believe:
that God IS Father, that he IS GOOD, that he wants good things for me, that I should allow this in my heart and act accordingly. This doubt about the goodness of God is like the primal temptation of man, which drives him into a lack of authenticity, into rebellion against his being a son, daughter, brother…but this is the deepest lack of authenticity, the deepest alienation from self, self-destruction, because it does not correspond to reality.
Authentic people are people of truth, which liberates and sets them free. But in order to submit to this truth, a healing of the heart is needed that makes this possible. What could this look like in practice? Here are a few ideas.
A first idea. Simply repeat the sentence “My Jesus, I trust in you” often. If you’re still struggling with Jesus, maybe try “My God, I trust in you.” In between. When doing the dishes or jogging, on the subway or when getting up or during an argument or when faced with an inhibiting fear or worry. This plain and simple prayer does more than one thing. It is throwing oneself into the arms of God, a cry for help and, precisely because of this, an act of trust that there is a good order, that God means well with me and actually likes me a lot.
It helps the heart to come in a healthy attitude, even to experience healing and not because I would somehow talk myself into it, but because God is really doing something, really helping me and coming to my side. It’s like the first stage of authenticity. The first stage of coherence between my innermost self and God’s order of the world. In the Center of John Paul II we speak of our first core value being that of “openness”. Open to others, yes, open to people who are far away, an open heart for those in need. But first and foremost open to the love of the heavenly Father, who first of all simply looks at you and me with love, knowing that everything he will say this first affirmation only comes out of his mouth because he loves me. How healing that can be! And how it can help us to come home again from alienation!
A second: Responsibility for our own missteps. It is about overcoming the shame, the nakedness: admitting our own creatureliness, our need for healing. Responsibility for committed sin, abuse of freedom, repentance. Standing up. “Creating order” -pax est tranquilitas ordinis (Augustine).
Willingness to make yourself vulnerable, to admit your own mistakes to yourself and to God. You can do this if you know that this “where are you” does not want to condemn you, but wants to save you, to set you free. Confession can help VERY much with this.If it is made regularly and if we take it seriously and are serious about God. “I have sinned in thought, word and deed, through my guilt” -not only confession, but I would like to challenge you, who often go to church, to consciously say this prayer at the beginning of the Mass, not only before God, but also before each other. It is a step towards authenticity. It is making ourselves vulnerable.
A third ida. See that there are people in your life who can tell you things and to whom you can tell things, tell everything. Accountability, being accountable. VERY VERY VERY often the big missteps start where there is no accountability. That’s where the lack of authenticity arises very quickly. Maybe it’s the spouse. We in the community have something we call “honest hour” -it’s just one of those moments where we try to openly and honestly live out this core value of “openness”, openly talking about our struggles, but also openly and honestly asking for feedback.
And to ask for prayer openly and honestly. Asking prayer for each other in the areas where we really need it is a strong guarantee of authenticity. Perhaps the framework for this is your Exodus group or small group, perhaps it is the spiritual accompaniment. But here, too, it is true: authentic people are people of truth, who liberate and set free.
On Friday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Lord, we ask you to heal our hearts through your open, vulnerable and loving heart.
And Mary, whose pure and unclouded heart we Catholics remembered especially yesterday, please intercede for us with your loving heart before your Son, that we too may live with this purity and authenticity. Amen.
