Rm 5:12-19; Mt 4:1-11
From the earliest times the Church has imitated the 40 days fast of Jesus. As Jesus prepared for his public ministry by a fast of 40 days, so we all together prepare for the annual celebration of Easter by a fast of 40 days. Lent for us is always a time of special grace. During lent we make a serious effort to practise some extra self-denial, prayer, almsgiving and the rest, and to focus renewed attention on Jesus in his Passion and in his saving death. Doing that prepares us in the best way possible to celebrate his glorious resurrection. These mysteries of Christ are not there for us to ponder as if from afar, as detached observers. They are mysteries for us to enter, to become part of, to absorb and become identified with.
We know, we affirm, that Jesus is the unique High Priest; the unique Son of God; the unique Saviour of the world. But we also know, and affirm, that he calls us to participate in all that. We have to share the Priesthood of Jesus through our worship of God the Father in the Holy Spirit: through our lives of intercession and reparation. We have to share the divine Sonship of Jesus: for in him, as St. John says, we have been given power to become sons or children of God. And through him, with him and in him we also have to help mediate the salvation of the world.
I’d like to focus today a bit on our second reading, from Romans Chapter 5. Romans Chapter 5 is a cry of joy, of triumph, of victory, of absolute assurance. St. Paul has prepared the way for that by reflecting on the state of the human race, which he divides into Gentiles and Jews. The Gentiles of course do not enjoy the privileges and covenants of the Jews. Nevertheless, Paul concludes that it’s entirely through their own fault that they find themselves radically separated from God. They have chosen sin, expressed in abominable behaviours, and they have chosen foolish idolatry, through which they only sink ever more deeply into the ways of wickedness and depravity. What about the Jews? They are no better off! In fact if anything they are even worse off in God’s sight. They have the law, but they don’t keep it. In spite of all the gifts God has heaped upon them, like the Gentiles the Jews find themselves under the dominion of sin, and so are justly condemned by God.
The tale is very dismal indeed. The whole human race is in a dreadful state, and on its own quite without hope. Ah, but God in his love and mercy has reached out in a wholly unexpected, utterly wonderful way through Christ Jesus our Lord. While we were all God’s enemies, while we were all dead in our sins, while we were so completely and helplessly lost, Christ came, and died for us, so that we might live through him. His death is our life, our reconciliation, our cleansing and forgiveness. By his death Christ has wiped away our sin and overcome our own death. Just as he died with us, for us, so we must now die with him, for him: in order to be able to live with him.
Meanwhile, as we await his Second Coming, through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord we have justification. That is, through our attachment to him, our identification with him, who is perfectly righteous, we too are found righteous in God’s sight. That means: now we are able to be God’s friends, God’s sons, to walk in God’s favour, and to respond to God’s love with answering love, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
And so to our passage today. St. Paul seems to set up a series of parallels, only to blow them down again, protesting that they are no parallels at all. There was the first Adam, and there is the second Adam. There was sin and death; and there is now righteousness and life. There was the justly inflicted penalty, and there is now the free gift of redemption. There was slavery, and there is now freedom. There was disobedience, and now there is obedience.
Ah, cries Paul, but the Second Adam is so much greater than the first that they are not to be compared. The first Adam was actually in function of the second, not vice versa. Placed at the head of all humanity, the first Adam prefigured in a feeble, symbolic and wholly inadequate way the Second Adam. He is truly and by right the Head of all humanity, King of all creation, Lord of the world, universal Saviour, Redeemer, Inaugurator of the new Creation.
By his free act, the first Adam brought about what we call original sin. This has spread through the whole human race, not just as a bad example, or even just as an inherited guilt: no, original sin is a lethal infection which has entered or corrupted our nature itself. And that is not in any way to be compared to the gift of grace we receive through Jesus Christ. Through the original sin of Adam, rightly, justly and inevitably, death came for all. But through the free gift of Jesus Christ, there has been an explosion, as it were - a wholly gratuitous and in principle limitless outpouring of life. The grace of justification in Christ is not simply a reversal of a bad state. Much better than that, it raises us very high, so that our life with God is now far better than that enjoyed by the first Adam; and those who are justified in Christ are far more righteous than Adam ever was before he sinned.
Christ then is the source of all our joy, all our hope, and even all our good. But in order to be that, he bent very low in humility; he suffered very bitterly in all his trials and temptations, and above all in his Passion. Finally he hung on the Cross, so that in his blood all our sins might be washed away, and the redemption of the human race perfectly and super-abundantly accomplished.
What remains? To rejoice in this free gift, treasure it, give thanks for it, affirm our total confidence in its power. Then: we resolve henceforth to follow Jesus; to walk with him his way of the Cross; to endure with him all the temptations and trials that come our way: hoping always to share with him at last in his glorious victory.