Introduction
- Wild beasts are always dangerous; we cannot expect them to be behaving as friends. Attacking even its master is its natural instinct.
- It was hot news in the US news paper, on October, 2010, that ‘a tiger was seized from an apartment from New York’. People first thought it was a figurative language, but later realized that it was a real grown up tiger. It was of a man called Antoine Yates. He got a tiger calf few years back and decided it keep in his own apartment in NY in secret. The tiger was grown up in his apartment for years. Sometimes it would maul Antoine but he still loved it. One day he was seriously injured by its attack and phoned to the police for help. He was then rescued by the police. They transferred the tiger to a wild life sanctuary.
- Antoine’s mistakes were:
o He did not realize that the tiger calf was growing.
o He tried to be friend with it, but forgot that it has its wild nature.
o He tried to satisfy the tiger secretly, by providing it the food and other facilities.
- Today we reflect on Jesus among the wild beasts. Some scripture scholars is of the opinion that it was very hard for the wild beast to live on a deserted place where Jesus spend 40 days. Therefore it is a figurative language, indicating ‘the evil powers around Jesus’.
Body
- In these days we seldom meet wild beasts around. But when we introspect we see lot of these kinds within our self. They are the evil tendencies within us. It can be tendencies against life, against truth, against sexuality, against neighbor and so on.
- We may commit the same mistake of Antoine.
o He did not realize that the tiger calf was growing: without our knowledge, by our silent consent, these evil tendencies would grow and become uncontrollable one day.
o He tried to be friend with it: we may think that these evil tendencies are friends of mine and will never be a problem.
o He tried to satisfy the tiger: we do lot of things in our life to satisfy the hunger of the evil habits with in us.
- Jesus teaches us how to fight against these evil within us.
o Word of God – Jesus win over the three temptations by using the Word of God.
o Fasting – Jesus fasted 40 days and showed us the power of fasting in fighting against the evil power. Fasting means abstaining from what we like much, eg; drinking soft drinks every day, smoking, alcohol, etc. It strengthens our mind and enables us to fight against the evil power.
o Prayer – When we are connected with God through prayer we are strong.
Conclusion
- Let this Lenten season be a time to reflect on our own self and find out the wild beasts within us.
- Let us not commit the mistakes of Antoine.
- Let us use Word of God, Fasting and Prayer to conquer these evil tendencies within us.
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