Mystic

Defender and proclaimer of God's absolute primacy

Our prayer motif for today is the first feature in the “profile of the new Salesian”: being a mystic leads the Salesian to living his vocation in total dedication and ongoing conversion under God's unconditional supremacy. We will focus our attention, our heart, on the person of Jesus, witness and model of faithfulness to the God who had declared that he was his Son and whose cause, the kingdom, he takes up as his exclusive concern. One God alone, the Father, one cause alone, the kingdom.

We intend to retrace Jesus' passion for God and his concerns as the key to understanding his person and work. His total identification with God and his cause confirms him as the beloved Son and makes him his best evangeliser. It is not a case of different tasks, but Jesus needed to distinguish these tasks as he carried them out: before dedicating himself to preaching God and his kingdom, Jesus had to prove to himself that he was accepted as God wanted him to be, as his son.

1.Favoured son and tempted son

He had not yet begun his public ministry that would have the kingdom of God as its task (Mt 4:17; Mk 1:15), when Jesus received the Spirit of God who declared himself to be his loving Father (Mt 3:17; Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22): he had not yet worked as an apostle and he was already declared to be a son. But before setting out to work as the preacher of the Kingdom, he had a temptation to overcome: God's beloved son must freely choose to live as a son.

The fact that the temptation comes after he is declared to be the son (divine sonship), and is focused on it, is no less illustrative of the manner in which the temptation occurred. The tempter will not dare deny what God has declared; he expresses a doubt which he communicates to the son of God. Wanting it to be felt as his doubt (the son's), he offers certain reasons to spur this on. Jesus should be choosing God, with no other support or certainty than the Word of God. This is what sons of God nurture themselves on.

The tempter – we need to be aware of this – has focused his attack not on Jesus' mission but on his divine sonship; not on what he has come to do but on what they had told him he was. So really, by tempting Jesus, Satan is attacking God. Only when the Son of God aligns himself with God's will can his victory over the evil One begin, by preaching the Kingdom.

2.Being a spokesman of God, he must identify with his cause

Jesus will overcome temptation because he prefers to identify himself with God and be as He wants him to be (Mt 4:3-11). After that he can appear in public and embrace God's cause, his kingdom on earth. The one who proclaims God has known how to personally oppose Satan and come out as the victor. So should we be surprised that Jesus' first proclamation of the kingdom is done by expelling demons and freeing people from evil (Mt 4:24; cf. Mk 1:21-28)?

Having identified with God he can become his spokesperson. Aware that he is his son, he is aware of his plans (cf. Jn 3:45; 5:19; 7:29). He can announce them because he knows about them (cf. Jn 8:28.55). He will tell others what he has come to know through personal experience: the Gospel he preaches is a public expression of his faith, his confession of faithfulness in the face of temptation ( cf. Jn 5:17.19). God presented him as his beloved son (Mt 3:17); now he presents himself as his preacher. His identity card is the Gospel of the Kingdom. In temptation he identified himself as the son of God, and in his mission he identifies himself with what the Father wants: to reign over Israel (Mt 4:17). The fact is that we have to recognise ourselves as sons of God so we can speak of God as Father.

Nor should we silently pass over the fact that after having proclaimed the kingdom for the first time (Mt 4:17), the first thing Jesus does is to order two pairs of brothers to follow him (Mt 4:18-22). He had but one cause, God and his kingdom, but he did not want to pursue this alone. The one who proclaims that God is near must not only approach his listeners, he needs to be accompanied by followers. Discipleship is the first result of true evangelisation.

Today's aims

Saint Ignatius does not call the one who is leading the Retreat a preacher, or director, but simply says he is "the one giving the exercises". Giving “exercises” supposes, first of all, offering themes for prayer as briefly as possible; but it also implies clearly setting the aims the exercise is meant to achieve.

The fundamental objective for this first day is to become aware of the level of identification with God with which we are living our consecrated Salesian life, giving real names to the causes that draw us away from, even help us betray God (dis-order) and look for ways that will bring us back to giving God prime of place in our life (re-organisation).

We will do this in two stages. During the morning, we will ask ourselves if we accept ourselves as God wants us, as his sons, and if we want him as he wants to be for us, our Father. We are questioning our relationship with God, how we welcome him into our lives. We should identify our personal ‘temptations’ that – temptations of the sons of God – are the result of our weakness, natural or otherwise, in putting the Word at our service, or our yearning to be like Him without wanting to be of Him. It should console us to see temptation as a spiritual experience, a kind of pedagogical path the Father wants us to follow.

In the afternoon, contemplating Jesus as the Evangelist of the Kingdom, we will ask ourselves what are the causes we are pursuing which give meaning to our lives as consecrated individuals. Any other project that is not part of God's plan is against him, a 'Lord' of our own that will not save us. We need to identify it and reject it. What is at stake here is our being more radical, being sons of God. The son has no other cause than the kingdom of heaven.

May Mary, who contemplated what was going on around her and in her, in her heart, be your guide and companion through the day.