Commemoration of St. Gregory the Great (540-604)
Worship: Noon, soup
meal follows; 7 pm, soup meal at 6 pm.
Reading: Matthew 4:1-11
“Then
the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the
temple, saying to him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down…'"
Matt.4:5-6a
Jesus fasted for forty days, and the tempter tried to entice
him to turn stones into bread. Then the
tempter tried to entice Jesus to throw himself down from a height of fourteen
stories and defy gravity and death. Jesus wandered humbly without possessions,
and the tempter tried to entice him with great wealth and power. All of these
temptations were attempts to lure Jesus away from his true identity: that of
embodied compassion. For compassion suffers with (“cum” – “patior”). If Jesus
were truly to live as humans live, he would at some time suffer hunger, thirst,
alienation, disappointment, pain, loneliness, death. To opt out of any of these
experiences would lessen his capacity to be the Compassionate One. Compassion
suffers with. It is experienced from a state of equality, not from a superior
position of pity, but from a position of equals. Christ suffered, died, and
rose anew, his brokenness left behind, and with compassion in his eyes, he
reaches to us and bids us rise to the compassionate life he lived.
As you
sent the Christ, O God, to show your compassion for all creation, may our lives
be transformed into his image. Amen
- Identify something that lures you away from your
true identity as a baptized person. Pray about it.
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