Decisive Encounters

Collection: Seeds of Hope

Title: Decisive Encounters

Author: Roberto Badenas

Translator: Celia Gómez

Edition, design and project development: Editorial Safeliz team

© Editorial Safeliz, S. L.

Copyright by © Editorial Safeliz, S. L.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture marked NKJV is taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Italics in quotations of the above translations are added by the author for emphasis.

Index

Introduction 7

Preface: The Temptation 11

1. The Meeting 25

2. The Invitation 37

3. The Call 51

4. The Wedding 61

5. The Disagreement 75

6. The Healing 87

7. The Embrace 99

8. The Forgiveness 109

9. The Contact 119

10. The Look 129

11. The Liberation 145

12. The Storm 159

13. The Tomb 169

14. The Supper 179

15. The Escape 191

16. The Kiss 199

17. The Dream 209

18. The Compassion 219

19. The Promise 227

20. The Reconciliation 241

Epilogue: The Farewell 255

To whoever seeks spiritual roads beyond

the hackneyed paths, hoping

that on them the promise of Jesus is fulfilled:

“. . . seek and you will find . . .

the one who seeks finds . . .” (Matt. 7:7-8)

Introduction

It has been said: “every important decision in life, every great love, emerges from an encounter.”1 Indeed, much of what we become is owed to others. Throughout our existence, we gradually shape ourselves; from encounter to encounter we build and destroy ourselves. Fortuitous, expected or feared, banal or extraordinary, our encounters mark us, some in a decisive way.

Disoriented in our search, trapped in the clutches of our own routines or surprised by the storm—in the most unexpected occasions of life, at the turn of a corner, in the face of an accident, before an open tomb—we face an encounter, an idea, a word, a glance, a gesture, an embrace, a kiss (who knows . . . ?) that decides our destiny.

At a given moment divine grace also bursts into our lives. It can occur at random from circumstances or arrive at the end of a long wait, like love at first sight or a friendship. And that encounter becomes the crossroads of our most personal, most profound story. The consequences, often irreversible, can be eternal.

Contrary to what some believe, apart from rare exceptions, those encounters do not usually present themselves as irrefutable supernatural interventions. They most frequently occur without us realizing it: something happens to us that questions us and changes the course of our existence. It may even be the case that the encounter is so subtle that is goes unnoticed, and we go on as if nothing had happened. However, the marvelous miracle of memory waits as long as necessary, crouched down in us with divine patience. A day arrives over time when, without knowing how the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are put in place, we clearly see an image that stands out as a revelation. Pieces may be missing, but we can already recognize the message. We then rescue from our memories that which we ignored in its day. And it dawns on us that at some moment providence placed itself within our reach. That strange mystery makes sense, and our contact with God begins to flourish. Without realizing it we are living, on a spiritual level, “the non-transferable experience of the encounter.”2

In the pages that follow I attempt, simply, to share reflections arising from some decisive moments from the lives of men and women—not too different from us—who changed their destiny upon contact with Jesus. I have already explored this exercise of reflection and imagination with unexpected success in my book Encounters. Since its publication, already some years ago, many readers have asked me to publish more “encounters.” Due to my work and the vicissitudes of life, with its priorities and matters of urgency, I have not been able to do so until now. Finally, you have the expected book. But it is not a continuation of the first one. In twenty years my topics and approaches have changed. And my style also.

In the writing of this book, even more so than on other occasions, I have availed myself, as the scribe of the parable, of “things new and old.”3 I give my heartfelt thanks herein to all who have contributed to providing me the ideas from which I have drawn upon to write these pages. Deserving special mention is Marta Prats Fábregas who, once again, has not spared efforts in the editing of my texts.

The book is especially intended for those who say to themselves, along with the poet: “I live in the hope of meeting with him; but this meeting is not yet.”4 If these reflections manage to reveal any clue that brings them closer to the Teacher, I will feel doubly happy because of the hours I enjoyed meditating on him and writing for them.

1 . Phrase attributed to Dr. Albert Schweitzer by Gilbert Cesbron, in his theatre play Il est minuit, Dr. Schweitzer.

2 . Martín Gelabert, Salvación como humanización: un esbozo de una teología de la gracia, Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas, 1985, p. 13.

3 . Matthew 13:52.

4 . Rabindranath Tagore, “Song Offerings” poem 13 (cited from Select Works, Madrid: Edimat, 2015, p. 76).

Preface

The Temptation

What does the lone traveler seek through these wastelands? Where is he headed on the way to the desert? As soon as he leaves the narrow fertile plain of the river, and as he ascends inland, he gradually and hopelessly goes deeper into an increasingly barren place. Having arrived at the summit, when he has lost sight of—faded in the distance—the memory of the last gray-green palm trees, the traveler finds himself lost in a desolate vastness of broken rocky places, whitish like abandoned ossuaries, in which not even goat herders dare to venture. An endless succession of inhospitable stony areas injured by sun-scorched gullies and blinded by dust storms on windy days. A barren plain without shelters, bristling with parched hawthorns, where scorpions survive as best they can.

With the memory of the coolness of the river still drenching his hair, the young man penetrates the ardent loneliness of that wretched place.1 In the distance he hears the howling of jackals driven mad by hunger and thirst, which wait for nightfall to descend into the valley to satiate their instincts. A bird of prey, perhaps a falcon, hovers menacingly, against the cloudless blue sky, gliding over its prey.

What does the wanderer seek where there is hardly anything? What have all those explorers, high-risk adventurers or enlightened mystics searched for in so many other deserts upon embarking on unthinkable journeys alone, testing their limits? Perhaps something more than the fascination of the unknown and its secrets of unexplored areas. Because like it or not, solitude is also the place of inevitable encounter with your own inner world, with its hidden regions, so full of surprises and dangers like the most remote corners of our planet. The desert is the unavoidable place of encounter with oneself.

Furthermore, whoever does not fear approaching the absolute, in any place, however remote, runs the risk of also encountering God, who is everywhere. For that reason, the desert, that environment where no one distracts the attention of the seeker nor can anything conceal the certainty of the unavoidable presence of the infinite, has always been the chosen place by those who feel the pressing need to withdraw themselves from the world to meditate or to pray.2

The newly baptized seeks a remote place to reflect on what has just happened to Him in the Jordan.3 A divine voice has spoken to Him, and He understands that God is calling Him to a unique task. But the voice from the sky has only said:

You are my beloved son; I feel proud of you.4

Jesus needs to hear more of His father’s voice to know what he expects of Him. The moment has arrived to discover what His mission will consist of and to decide how to undertake it.

He has left His home in Nazareth, and His family does not understand. From the time this idealist carpenter insisted on transferring the shop to His brothers and said goodbye to His family, His mother does nothing but cry. None of His relatives support Him. Some don’t cease to ridicule Him by treating Him as the enlightened one, a fanatic or a madman, and are now undoubtedly happy to lose sight of Him.5 No one, not even He, is a prophet in His own land.6

He needs an environment of serenity and calmness to reflect on His vocation and assume the risks that He shall face if He wishes to follow the voice from heaven. Here, in the silence of the desert of Judaea, He expects to find the peace and inspiration that will allow Him to hear in the depths of His heart God’s response to His numerous questions.

Nonetheless, this inhospitable wilderness is a fearful place, without water, without food, ephemeral hideout of bandits, the dwelling of hungry vermin and deadly snakes. Whoever gets lost in it knows that he must deal with any adversity and without any protection. Not in vain, the majority of human beings fear solitude and so avoid it at all cost. Moreover, a certain level of isolation becomes unbearable for whoever is afraid of his own inner emptiness, or for whoever has already sensed that undesirable presences peer out from the depths of his being.7 And even if this may not be his case, Jesus does not ignore the reality that, for many, such a desert is a sinister place, where demons are said to prowl . . .

But what real danger can there be in the desert for someone like Him? Does evil not abound more in cities? Since the most ancient times on earth, there are no remaining paradises shielded from danger, not even the most uninhabited. Because when we find ourselves completely alone, rarely are we in good company . . . There they are, lurking, whether we like it or not, our inevitable thoughts and the inescapable demands of our bodies.

The dreadfulness of the desert is that it forces us to assume what we truly are, without external help, and unable to feign or escape. There, we are really ourselves. The desert is, so far an obligatory place of passage for those who seek to find themselves, the par excellence environment of the test, because we must always make the most difficult decisions in the insulated stronghold of our inner solitude. The desert is, consequently, a dangerous battleground against invisible enemies.8

The contrast between this desolate wasteland and His previous experience cannot be greater. Upon the sublime moment Jesus feels embraced by the love of the Father in the coolness of the water in the middle of the river, He is stricken by the ardent solitude of this wilderness. Several hours of traveling have sufficed to make him go from communion with God through the open heavens to the painful sensation of desertion, and, what’s worse, to the absolute conviction of the presence of enemies lying in wait.

Jesus senses that He is not alone. He perceives the proximity of hungry beasts and evil spirits. He finds himself lost between the subhuman and the suprahuman, with no more company than his vulnerable humanity and the dark world of the shadows.

In this manner, forty days.9

Forty nights debating in doubt, unable to communicate with anyone, defenseless in a harsh and merciless land, and under a sky that seems infinitely distant . . .

When His desertion becomes more hurtful, when He fears fainting from starvation and anxiety, at the brink of delirium, He notices that someone approaches. The biblical passage calls this intruder by the generic name of peiradson, “the Tempter.” But Jesus does not yet know who it is. Soon, He will realize that His worst enemy is stalking Him.

But how can someone as spiritual as Jesus be tempted? Someone like Him who seeks communion with God should not run that risk . . .

Completely false.

In this world, the path of the believer necessarily passes, time and time again, through the desert of temptation. To be tempted is the price of being free, of being able to choose between various options and of running the risk of making a mistake. That freedom and that risk are the characteristics of human nature.10

To Jesus, assuming our condition represents having to confront, necessarily—as Adam and Eve, as the Israelites in the Exodus, as each one of us—decisions that often hide menacing risks. It is in our own being, at the core of our free will, where they attack with greater treachery and where we must face the forces of evil.

This young man, idealistic and generous like no other —when seeking divine answers to His human concerns has just responded to the call of God by completely surrendering to His will now that he is making concrete plans to dedicate his life to Him—finds himself abandoned in the agonizing desert of the test.

“Can it be,” He asks himself, “that God is telling me that I am mistaken?”

His doubt-stricken soul will end up learning through its own experience that “Never does one leave the ranks of evil for the service of God without encountering the assaults of Satan.” 11 Himself included or, rather, He more than anyone.12

The tempter, the treacherous peiradson, is very clever. He will not allow himself to be so easily recognized. He knows that, in order to convince someone, he has much greater assurances of success if he disguises temptation as necessity, if he turns it into an emergency or passes it off as something licit. Therefore, following his artful tactics, perfected after millennia of success, he begins by insinuating in the mind of the tempted a thought that is logical, a desire that seems legitimate . . . a voice that can recall that of an angel.

Every true temptation sooner or later gives rise to an inner, profound, subtle, struggle camouflaged as good excuses, disguised as laudable reasons, and nuanced by all extenuating factors and all possible justifications. That is how the tempter presents himself to Jesus, like the voice of a celestial messenger who comes to help Him.

Jesus has gone forty days without eating.

He is not fasting for the purpose of carrying out a purifying sacrifice or a meritorious exercise, and much less with the intention of undergoing a weakening diet to make everything “even more difficult,” as in a risky circus act. No. His fasting, learned in the Holy Scriptures,13 is the harsh collateral effect of the total availability that His intense inner struggle requires. He finds himself so immersed in prayer, so focused in His search of the divine will that He refuses to be distracted by anything else, and renounces, until able to get out of His trance, the search for food. However, like every man in similar circumstances, He feels hungry. His need for food is pressing, real, inevitable. In His exhausted body, the instinct of survival is thrown into despair.

The enemy is awaiting that moment at which the imperious need to survive, to which our mortal body is subjected, offers no way out: the banal desire to eat has turned into a matter of life or death.

But, because Jesus is profoundly engrossed in His search for God, the enemy will camouflage his temptation by placing it within the framework of the sublime spiritual experience that the Nazarene has gone through on occasion of His baptism:

Are you sure you heard correctly? What was the voice from heaven saying? Did it not say: “This is my beloved son?” Then, if you really are the Son of God, your Father will not allow you to die from hunger. Draw upon your divine power: the Creator of the universe can make bread even from these stones. You say that you want to be treated like any other human? All men have the right to eat when they suffer from hunger. Further, they have an obligation to do so without reaching these absurd extremes in which you placed yourself endangering your life.

Jesus knows that His destiny, and perhaps more than that, hangs in the balance of a correct decision. He also knows that upon accepting to become a man He has assumed sharing even the ultimate consequences of the vulnerable human condition.14 When we, mortals, are hungry and know that we run the risk of dying from starvation, we eat; and, if unable to feed ourselves, we faint. For that reason, when we desperately lack food, we seek it, we purchase it at whatever cost, we beg for it, we steal it . . . but we can not make bread from stones. Human beings have unavoidable limitations and Jesus has decided to live within the same limits that constrain us.

That is why, His first temptation in this desert, although it implies resorting to the power of God outside of the divine design, has the same essence as many of the temptations suffered by any common mortal, yesterday, today, and always:

You know that you should not. But if you desire it so much, do it.15

The tempter has been very cunning. He has limited himself to introducing an enormous temptation in a tiny wedge, through the word “if . . .” There is room for tremendous doubt in that conditional, minute particle: “If you were really a Son of God, he would not allow you to die like that . . .”

But Jesus replies to one word of doubt with two words of faith:

It is written: “Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” 16

Jesus thus puts the word of God above the voice of His own desires.

It is as though he were saying: “God would not approve my cowardice. He has made it very clear. Human beings are not mere animals. Of course our bodies inexorably need food, but our spirits also need, in order not to be mistaken, to listen to God and pay heed to him. Divine revelation exists for that purpose: to nourish ourselves with it. If I can trust His word, I should not doubt that He can get me out of this predicament without Me having to cheat at all.”

In the face of this first failure, the tempter becomes emboldened. But in his own audacity he has shown his true colors. The perfidious peiradson, already identified as “the devil,” prepares his second assault. Now he also positions himself in the religious field, barging into the dominions of his coveted victim.

Because Jesus trusts God so much that he blindly clings to the promises of divine protection contained in the Scriptures, the devil searches for another biblical cite susceptible to manipulation, and, cleverly taking it out of context,17 he attacks his victim in the realm of His own faith, pushing Him to take a shortcut in His ministry.

If you cite the Bible, so will I. Given that you have so much confidence in your Father and in his promises, demonstrate it. There you have it, before you, the atrium of the temple.

Observe how Your people pray and implore for the coming of the Messiah around the altar of sacrifices. Go down and tell them that You are already here, that they do not need to wait any longer. Does the Bible not say that the angels will accompany You in Your glorious descent? Thrust Yourself now and end their wait; end once and for all the suffering of Your people and Your own torture.

To throw oneself through the air toward the temple is not to take a deadly leap without a net and with the parachute closed. This is not about the temptation to make a BASE jump. Jesus is tempted to make a much riskier leap. Descending in the middle of the temple carried by angels equates to presenting himself before the people of Israel as it expected that the Messiah would appear; that is, “I will fill this temple with glory.” 18

The tempter, again, is not asking Jesus to do anything bad, but rather to simply agree to appear before His co-religionists as they expect. The proposed spectacular appearance could bring Him enormous advantages at the time. If He presents himself as the expected liberator, His immediate success is guaranteed. He would be received no less as the glorious King His people yearn for.

But Jesus reflects and says to himself:

Careful. In the design outlined by God, that is not the plan for my first coming, but for the second.

The devil is proposing to Jesus that He take a shortcut to avoid problems in His salvific mission. But He, who in fact has come to this earth to give us victory over evil’s complex web, does not want to obtain such with the irresistible force of spectacular miracles but through the conversion of the heart, eternally placing Himself at the service of humanity up to the sacrifice.

If Jesus appears in the temple as the tempter implies, He is acting outside God’s plan, forcing the latter to change His plans. He would be tempting Him. In this way, He would not be answering the great challenge cast to God by fallen humanity, which has always been the same:

Come down if you are a man.

And Jesus is there, accepting that challenge until its ultimate consequences.

He therefore responds once again entrenched in his condition of man:

I am not willing to tempt God or to impose My ways upon Him. I submit to His plans, although at the moment they may seem incomprehensible and may be painful.

Jesus is being tempted to muddle up His faith with the audacity of presumption, and His trust in God with the insolence of demanding a miracle from Him, and thus disregarding His plans.

This second great temptation of Jesus, like many of ours, has, ultimately, this challenge:

Dare yourself; nothing is going to happen to you. Do whatever you feel like doing; the easiest, the most gratifying. Forget about what God says and do not think about the consequences of your actions.19

The devil bites the dust of a new defeat. But he does not give up the battle. He well knows that Jesus has come into the world in an attempt to save planet Earth from its self-destruction, and, if possible, to save each human being from that evil that kills him. For his third assault20 the enemy leads him to contemplate in His reflections, from the heights of His plans of salvation, the spiritual and historic reality of this world.

If you think about the outlook of humanity, you can already see that it is lost as a whole. Human beings have fallen into my power. They are all mine. Well, then, I will give them to you if you bow down and worship me. In other words, they can all be yours if you do as I say, that is, if you do as I do.

Jesus very well knows how the enemy has waged against humans, how he makes us fall into his clutches and separates us from God: to this effect he uses shrewdness, deceit, seduction, money, pleasure, pressure, violence, whatever, to impose upon our will.

Satan is in fact the provisional master of the world, in the sense that all human beings, upon succumbing to his will in one way or another, place themselves, without realizing it, under his dominance. Jesus comes to establish the kingdom of God, that is, to try to make good reign once again in this world and in each one of us. He knows that winning us over for God, appealing to the free choice of each one of us, knocking at the door of each heart, will take him a long time, and will eventually not be able to gain us all. And what if He were to force everyone to love, ending once and for all the human tragedy? Does God not want everyone’s salvation?21