You can read the original source (in Portuguese) here.
In today's Gospel, Jesus answers the scribes and Pharisees with a striking rebuke: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign." Yet He is not condemning the simple desire to understand. Throughout Scripture, God grants signs to those who ask for them in humility—Gideon, Hezekiah, Zechariah, and many others. The problem is not the request itself, but the disposition of the heart from which it springs.
At first glance, Christ's accusation seems disproportionate. What possible connection is there between asking for a miracle and being called "adulterous"?
The answer lies in the theology of the Covenant.
From Hosea through Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Israel is portrayed as the bride of God, while idolatry is repeatedly described as adultery. This is more than a poetic image. Marriage is the visible sign of the Covenant itself, so that infidelity to God is, in the deepest spiritual sense, marital infidelity.
The Pharisees, of course, did not worship Baal or burn incense before pagan idols. Their idolatry was subtler. The Gospels reveal that other gods had quietly taken the place that belonged to God alone.
The first was their own righteousness. Saint Luke describes the Pharisee as one who "trusted in himself that he was righteous" (Lk 18:9). His confidence no longer rested upon divine mercy, but upon his own religious observance.
There was also the pursuit of human glory. "How can you believe," Jesus asks, "when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" (Jn 5:44). Christ's point is not merely that they desired human praise; rather, that such desire rendered faith itself impossible.
To this must be added their attachment to religious authority. After the raising of Lazarus—one of Christ's greatest signs—the chief priests do not ask whether the miracle is genuine. Instead, they conclude, "If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him" (Jn 11:48). A few verses later, they decide that He must die.
Saint Luke also remarks that many Pharisees were "lovers of money" (Lk 16:14), while Jesus accuses them of nullifying the word of God for the sake of human traditions (cf. Mk 7:13). Wealth, reputation, religious standing, even cherished traditions had ceased to be instruments of serving God and had become ends in themselves. That is idolatry in its purest form.
Viewed through the lens of Scholastic anthropology, the phenomenon becomes even clearer. Commenting on Aristotle's observation that the end appears differently according to the character of the person who perceives it, Saint Thomas Aquinas writes: Qualis unusquisque est, talis finis videtur ei—"The end appears to each person according to what he is" (cf. Nicomachean Ethics III; STh I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 5).
Yet Thomas is careful not to reduce this principle to determinism. The disposition of a person inclines him toward certain choices; it does not compel them. Bodily and moral habits influence judgment, but they do not abolish freedom. The will does not manufacture truth. Rather, it disposes the intellect toward—or away from—the recognition of truth.
This is why the unbelief of the Pharisees cannot be explained as an intellectual failure. The evidence before them was overwhelming. The blind received their sight, the lame walked, lepers were cleansed, demons were cast out, and even the dead were raised. To acknowledge Jesus would have required surrendering those goods that had become the true center of their lives.
Here we begin to understand the spiritual dynamic Christ exposes, one already described by the prophets centuries before. Hosea's unfaithful wife does not cease to hear her husband's voice because she lacks evidence of his love. She ceases to recognize it because she has already given herself to other lovers: "I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water" (Hos 2:7). The Lord gives her grain, wine, and oil, yet she attributes these gifts to Baal (cf. Hos 2:10). The problem is not insufficient evidence. It is the loss of fidelity that alone makes the evidence intelligible. Once the covenant has been broken, every proof merely demands another proof, because suspicion no longer springs from lack of evidence but from a divided heart.
Blaise Pascal expressed this paradox with remarkable precision. God, he writes, has moderated the knowledge of Himself by leaving unmistakable signs for those who seek Him, while remaining hidden from those who do not: Il y a assez de lumière pour ceux qui ne désirent que de voir, et assez d'obscurité pour ceux qui ont une disposition contraire—"There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition" (Pensées, Sellier 274).
Pascal, however, is only giving fresh expression to a much older insight. Saint Augustine addresses God as secretissime et praesentissime—"most hidden and yet most present" (Confessions I.4.4). In a single breath he joins the furthest hiddenness with the closest intimacy. God neither reveals Himself with an evidence that overwhelms human freedom nor conceals Himself so completely that He cannot be found. Later Augustine describes Him as interior intimo meo et superior summo meo—"more inward than my inmost self and higher than my highest" (Confessions III.6.11). Divine revelation possesses precisely this delicacy: it discloses itself sufficiently to those who love it while remaining sufficiently veiled that it may still be refused by those who do not.
Saint John's Gospel, however, presses the analysis even further. While Matthew speaks of an "evil and adulterous generation," John uncovers the deepest source of that infidelity. "You are of your father the devil," Jesus declares, "and your will is to do your father's desires" (Jn 8:44).
The language is severe, but it should not be misunderstood in an ontological sense. Saint Augustine is explicit in his commentary on the First Epistle of John: Nam neminem fecit diabolus, neminem genuit, neminem creavit: sed quicumque fuerit imitatus diabolum, quasi de illo natus, fit filius diaboli imitando, non proprie nascendo. "The devil made no one, begot no one, created no one. Whoever imitates him becomes his child by imitation, not by birth."
Adam, Augustine continues, was created by God. Yet by consenting to the devil he became, morally speaking, the devil's son and transmitted that likeness to his descendants. Sonship here is ethical rather than natural, a distinction that Saint Thomas later preserves by distinguishing natural filiation from filiation by resemblance.
What, then, characterizes this sinister fatherhood? Christ Himself provides the answer. The devil "did not stand in the truth" and is "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44). His primordial sin was not ignorance but the rejection of a truth he already knew. He did not lack light; he lacked a will willing to submit to it.
The same progression unfolds in Christ's opponents throughout John's Gospel. They first dispute His teaching. Then they reject His signs. Soon they attribute His miracles to demonic power. Finally, they determine to kill Him. Falsehood becomes indispensable once the will has pledged itself to another master.
Only moments earlier Jesus had spoken a sentence that illuminates the entire episode: "If God were your Father, you would love me" (Jn 8:42). Significantly, He does not say, "you would understand me," but "you would love me." Recognition of the Son is born from love of the Father.
Saint Thomas provides the theological key in his treatment of the gift of wisdom. There are, he explains, two ways of judging rightly: through the disciplined exercise of reason, or through a kind of connaturality with the reality being judged. A moral philosopher may understand chastity through study, but the chaste person judges it rightly because he possesses it. The same is true of divine things. Sound judgment arises either from rational inquiry or from an affinity with God Himself. Thomas identifies the source of that affinity with characteristic precision: Huiusmodi autem compassio sive connaturalitas ad res divinas fit per caritatem, quae quidem unit nos Deo—"This sympathy, or connaturality, with divine things is brought about through charity, which unites us to God" (STh II-II, q. 45, a. 2).
When the will becomes inordinately attached to created goods, this connaturality is lost. The intellect still beholds the very same signs, but it no longer judges them rightly, because the heart has already enthroned another good as its supreme end.
Only then does the full weight of Christ's expression become clear. An "evil and adulterous generation" is not merely a catalogue of individual sins. It is the diagnosis of a covenant broken by misplaced love. Once fidelity has been abandoned, signs no longer lead to faith—not because they are insufficient, but because no miracle can persuade a will that has already given itself to another lord. The light has not diminished. What has changed is the eye that beholds it.
No comments:
Post a Comment