The Devil in Paradise…and here  

By F. Luis Casasus, General Superior of idente missionaries

Commentary on the X!s Sunday in Ordinary Time , June 10, 2018,  New York.

(Book of Genesis 3:9-15; 2Corinthians 4:13-18.5:1; Saint Mark 3:20-35.)

Where are you? These words to Adam are the first recorded sign of the mercy of God. When you go to visit a family and eventually you are lost, your friend will call you on your cell phone, asking Where are you? Then he can help you to find the way to his home.

In fact, this is the true meaning of sin in the biblical Greek, to miss the mark, to go astray. Sin is the failure to become what we are, children of God, persons created in His image and likeness. Sin is more than wrong actions, thoughts, or omissions. It is missing the mark with respect to the plan of God…and He has always a plan for us.

– He had a plan for the fig tree: He wanted it to bear fruit, even if it was not the time for figs. This fig tree represents a wake-up call for all of us so that we employ our talents for the service of the Kingdom.

– He had a plan for the people of Israel, so that they could be the light-bearers to the nations.

– He had a plan for Adam and Eve, for you and me. Our current circumstances are part of the story He is writing. We may be experiencing devastating events and our circumstances are oftentimes very painful; nobody can fully explain suffering or its meaning. Natural disasters, violence and tragic diseases are not the plan of God, but He is always ready to use our suffering to do something new in our life…and the lives of those who witness our behavior. In the Second Reading, St. Paul puts it clearly: For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.

And this is what He did after Adam’s sin. He did not curse Adam and Eve, He rather made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Leaving the Paradise was hard, but Adam and Eve did not leave other option to Yahve: They did not even apologize, but also they looked for excuses and rationalization: The serpent tricked me into it…The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree…

Most importantly, He only cursed the serpent, condemning it to eat dust all the days of its life. Even today, it is clear that “biting the dust” means to know defeat. It was a true prophecy of the final defeat of devil and the victory of Christ, the victory of Eve’s descendants, our victory.

Who told you that you were naked?  We all know the answer. The devil was seizing the opportunity to further detach them from God. He comes to tell us how sinful we are; how dirty we are that we begin run away from the presence of God. These feelings are some of the effects of the Diabolical Signs. Something new had taken place inside Adam. With our sins we, like him, become blinded and deafened and we forget that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Lk 19: 10).

The devil is the father of lies and this resides in the fact that he gets you to be deceived by your own emotions or by your own convincing logic:

Son, ordered a father, Don’t swim in that canal… OK, Dad, he answered. But he came home carrying a wet bathing suit that evening. Where have you been? demanded the father Swimming in the canal, answered the boy. Didn’t I tell you not to swim there? asked the father. Yes, Sir, answered the boy. Why did you? he asked. Well, Dad, he explained, I had my bathing suit with me and I couldn’t resist the temptation… Why did you take your bathing suit with you? he questioned. So I’d be prepared to swim, in case I was tempted, he replied.

Even our modern culture tries to do away with the feelings of guilt and shame. Ironically, many people tend to depersonalize the devil but, at the same time, they insist in the importance of a self-esteem gained through some compassionate inner dialogue with myself (¿?) an illusory dialogue where the main message is: I am more than enough. This is the “convincing logic” we previously mentioned. That explains why our Father Founder insisted in the danger of a dialogue with our passions.

The above refers to guilt and shame. At the other end of our self-conscious emotions, that typically focus on the self of the person who feels them, there is pride. When anyone begins this dialogue and consciously or unconsciously thinks that he or she is the one responsible for the success of the works undertaken, then that person is being deceived by the devil.

In the words of a popular saying, Wisdom is knowing yourself. And the way to gradually arrive at this wisdom is a continuous state of prayer, so that we can be docile and receptive to the power of God and His grace for us. This is well described by the Letter of St. James: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Once, someone asked Sir Alexander Fleming, the famous discoverer of Penicillin, about the greatest discovery of his life, he humbly answered: I discovered I am a sinner.

In Eph 1:1-5, St. Paul asserts that we are clothed in the glory of God. However, this is also what Adam and Eve and all of us, their children, lost when we sin. The sin of disobedience stripped our first parents of the glory of God; thus, the immediate effect of sin upon them was that they realized that they were naked. With their disobedience, sin entered our race and when we sin we stand naked, stripped of the glory of God.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son both sons cultivate a distorted view on their father. The younger son feels he no longer deserves to be called a son because he has broken all the rules, while the elder feels that he has earned a special treatment because he has kept all the rules. But following the law does not guarantee the rightness of relationship Mistakenly, both sons think that the father’s love depends on how they behave. But the love of God our Father does not depend on how we behave.

In Christ we are set free in order to turn again to our vocation of love for God and one another. This is our beginning, more original than original sin. In Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from the play Hamlet, the main character, voiced the question “To be, or not to be?” when he was at the verge of despair and self-destruction. Perhaps this is even deeper and relevant and applicable to all moments of our life: there is always a dilemma, to follow our vocation of love or not to follow it. When you say no, then you sin and   you are not truly living.

There is a main reason for which the scribes said: He is possessed by Beelzebul.

Envy. The same envy as Cain. God is more pleased with Abel’s sacrifice and inside Cain’s head envy was talking: This is not fair. You deserve better. Abel receives all the praises. So Cain kills Abel. The crime is murder and the motive is envy. The scribes, who had come from Jerusalem (this suggest a kind of official delegation), as everybody else, know how to act on envy: Sabotage the project of the other person; roll our eyes every time they say something; make him the victim of our sarcasm; chip away at their reputation; tell lies. Much of the conflict we experience in our lives is actually rooted in envy.

How can we avoid this corrosive sin in our lives? We have to be consistent with our experience of God’s love: to perceive it more and more distinctly and vividly (it is neither an illusion nor a just promise) and focus on seeking God’s plan for me in this very moment. This is exactly what Mary did when She visited her cousin Elizabeth: She was completely aware of the grace She herself had received, (The Lord has looked upon his lowly handmaid), and at the same time very conscious of God’s expectations and immediately set out to help Elizabeth who needed her assistance.

By offering Her humble service, She was wholly successful because, as the Gospel states, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. As Mary’s Magnificat also says: He has filled the hungry with good things.

Insanity and demon-possession were often linked in the ancient world, and even today; this is why we hear Jesus’ relatives saying in today Gospel: He is out of his mind. But Jesus does not complain about this attitude and, when He says: Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother, sister and mother, He is not disregarding His family. He is making clear that in the Kingdom of God, the most important family connection is spiritual, not physical: Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God; children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (Jn 1:12-13).

This is the true bond we have with our spiritual family, which eventually includes our natural family: we share in our eagerness to do God’s will. In Luke 14 Jesus says: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. We may be called to “hate” and “renounce” our family. For many parents it is hard to watch their children leave and go live elsewhere for mission, and sometimes this means they will not be able to take care as they would like of their aging parents. On the other hand, for those who do not believe in Jesus, when their children leave them to live in another part of the world, sometimes it looks like hate. When Jesus says we cannot be his disciples unless we “hate” our fathers, he probably means that we may be called on to do things that look as though we hate our fathers when, in fact, we are grateful to them, we love them and we long for them to join us in eternal life.

If we really wish to quench the thirst of our neighbors, calm the storms in their lives and cast out the demons that enslaves them, let us remain in the circle of Jesus’ family by taking Him as our cornerstone, our master and advisor in our decisions, both in ordinary affairs that seem petty and commonplace and in our trials and temptations which may seem intractable.

Where are you? These words to Adam are the first recorded sign of the mercy of God. When you go to visit a family and eventually you are lost, your friend will call you on your cell phone, asking Where are you? Then he can help you to find the way to his home.

In fact, this is the true meaning of sin in the biblical Greek, to miss the mark, to go astray. Sin is the failure to become what we are, children of God, persons created in His image and likeness. Sin is more than wrong actions, thoughts, or omissions. It is missing the mark with respect to the plan of God…and He has always a plan for us.

– He had a plan for the fig tree: He wanted it to bear fruit, even if it was not the time for figs. This fig tree represents a wake-up call for all of us so that we employ our talents for the service of the Kingdom.

– He had a plan for the people of Israel, so that they could be the light-bearers to the nations.

– He had a plan for Adam and Eve, for you and me. Our current circumstances are part of the story He is writing. We may be experiencing devastating events and our circumstances are oftentimes very painful; nobody can fully explain suffering or its meaning. Natural disasters, violence and tragic diseases are not the plan of God, but He is always ready to use our suffering to do something new in our life…and the lives of those who witness our behavior. In the Second Reading, St. Paul puts it clearly: For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.

And this is what He did after Adam’s sin. He did not curse Adam and Eve, He rather made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. Leaving the Paradise was hard, but Adam and Eve did not leave other option to Yahve: They did not even apologize, but also they looked for excuses and rationalization: The serpent tricked me into it…The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree…

Most importantly, He only cursed the serpent, condemning it to eat dust all the days of its life. Even today, it is clear that “biting the dust” means to know defeat. It was a true prophecy of the final defeat of devil and the victory of Christ, the victory of Eve’s descendants, our victory.

Who told you that you were naked?  We all know the answer. The devil was seizing the opportunity to further detach them from God. He comes to tell us how sinful we are; how dirty we are that we begin run away from the presence of God. These feelings are some of the effects of the Diabolical Signs. Something new had taken place inside Adam. With our sins we, like him, become blinded and deafened and we forget that the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost (Lk 19: 10).

The devil is the father of lies and this resides in the fact that he gets you to be deceived by your own emotions or by your own convincing logic:

Son, ordered a father, Don’t swim in that canal… OK, Dad, he answered. But he came home carrying a wet bathing suit that evening. Where have you been? demanded the father Swimming in the canal, answered the boy. Didn’t I tell you not to swim there? asked the father. Yes, Sir, answered the boy. Why did you? he asked. Well, Dad, he explained, I had my bathing suit with me and I couldn’t resist the temptation… Why did you take your bathing suit with you? he questioned. So I’d be prepared to swim, in case I was tempted, he replied.

Even our modern culture tries to do away with the feelings of guilt and shame. Ironically, many people tend to depersonalize the devil but, at the same time, they insist in the importance of a self-esteem gained through some compassionate inner dialogue with myself (¿?) an illusory dialogue where the main message is: I am more than enough. This is the “convincing logic” we previously mentioned. That explains why our Father Founder insisted in the danger of a dialogue with our passions.

The above refers to guilt and shame. At the other end of our self-conscious emotions, that typically focus on the self of the person who feels them, there is pride. When anyone begins this dialogue and consciously or unconsciously thinks that he or she is the one responsible for the success of the works undertaken, then that person is being deceived by the devil.

In the words of a popular saying, Wisdom is knowing yourself. And the way to gradually arrive at this wisdom is a continuous state of prayer, so that we can be docile and receptive to the power of God and His grace for us. This is well described by the Letter of St. James: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

Once, someone asked Sir Alexander Fleming, the famous discoverer of Penicillin, about the greatest discovery of his life, he humbly answered: I discovered I am a sinner.

In Eph 1:1-5, St. Paul asserts that we are clothed in the glory of God. However, this is also what Adam and Eve and all of us, their children, lost when we sin. The sin of disobedience stripped our first parents of the glory of God; thus, the immediate effect of sin upon them was that they realized that they were naked. With their disobedience, sin entered our race and when we sin we stand naked, stripped of the glory of God.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son both sons cultivate a distorted view on their father. The younger son feels he no longer deserves to be called a son because he has broken all the rules, while the elder feels that he has earned a special treatment because he has kept all the rules. But following the law does not guarantee the rightness of relationship Mistakenly, both sons think that the father’s love depends on how they behave. But the love of God our Father does not depend on how we behave.

In Christ we are set free in order to turn again to our vocation of love for God and one another. This is our beginning, more original than original sin. In Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from the play Hamlet, the main character, voiced the question “To be, or not to be?” when he was at the verge of despair and self-destruction. Perhaps this is even deeper and relevant and applicable to all moments of our life: there is always a dilemma, to follow our vocation of love or not to follow it. When you say no, then you sin and   you are not truly living.

There is a main reason for which the scribes said: He is possessed by Beelzebul.

Envy. The same envy as Cain. God is more pleased with Abel’s sacrifice and inside Cain’s head envy was talking: This is not fair. You deserve better. Abel receives all the praises. So Cain kills Abel. The crime is murder and the motive is envy. The scribes, who had come from Jerusalem (this suggest a kind of official delegation), as everybody else, know how to act on envy: Sabotage the project of the other person; roll our eyes every time they say something; make him the victim of our sarcasm; chip away at their reputation; tell lies. Much of the conflict we experience in our lives is actually rooted in envy.

How can we avoid this corrosive sin in our lives? We have to be consistent with our experience of God’s love: to perceive it more and more distinctly and vividly (it is neither an illusion nor a just promise) and focus on seeking God’s plan for me in this very moment. This is exactly what Mary did when She visited her cousin Elizabeth: She was completely aware of the grace She herself had received, (The Lord has looked upon his lowly handmaid), and at the same time very conscious of God’s expectations and immediately set out to help Elizabeth who needed her assistance.

By offering Her humble service, She was wholly successful because, as the Gospel states, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. As Mary’s Magnificat also says: He has filled the hungry with good things.

Insanity and demon-possession were often linked in the ancient world, and even today; this is why we hear Jesus’ relatives saying in today Gospel: He is out of his mind. But Jesus does not complain about this attitude and, when He says: Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my brother, sister and mother, He is not disregarding His family. He is making clear that in the Kingdom of God, the most important family connection is spiritual, not physical: Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God; children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God (Jn 1:12-13).

This is the true bond we have with our spiritual family, which eventually includes our natural family: we share in our eagerness to do God’s will. In Luke 14 Jesus says: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. We may be called to “hate” and “renounce” our family. For many parents it is hard to watch their children leave and go live elsewhere for mission, and sometimes this means they will not be able to take care as they would like of their aging parents. On the other hand, for those who do not believe in Jesus, when their children leave them to live in another part of the world, sometimes it looks like hate. When Jesus says we cannot be his disciples unless we “hate” our fathers, he probably means that we may be called on to do things that look as though we hate our fathers when, in fact, we are grateful to them, we love them and we long for them to join us in eternal life.

If we really wish to quench the thirst of our neighbors, calm the storms in their lives and cast out the demons that enslaves them, let us remain in the circle of Jesus’ family by taking Him as our cornerstone, our master and advisor in our decisions, both in ordinary affairs that seem petty and commonplace and in our trials and temptations which may seem intractable.