Phil Fox Rose

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February 26, 2007

Last Temptation

So I'm sitting in Saint Patrick's Cathedral on the first Sunday of Lent, preparing to go up, along with every other person in the New York metro area being baptized Catholic this Easter, one by one, to sign our names in the book and transition from being "catechumens" to being "members of the elect." I'm sitting there in my suit and tie, overwhelmed by the number of people and the diversity of the crowd and the beauty of the moment. But I'm also steeling myself as I have done at various stages along this nearly year-long path in anticipation that THIS Catholic situation will somehow offend my morals or beliefs. I'm assuming this because I'm outside of the cozy liberal enclave of the Jesuits, out in the messy mainstream Catholic world. I'm assuming this because a lot of the catechumens here are from the Bronx and Staten Island. I'm assuming this because I am about to hear a homily from Cardinal Egan. I know next to nothing about Cardinal Egan except that he was appointed by Pope John Paul II and is one of a few cardinals on the highest canon court of the Church. So I'm expecting something uncomfortably "conservative" -- whatever that means.

The Gospel reading, which corresponded to baptism and the beginning of the forty days of Lent, is about Jesus' forty days in the desert and the temptations that were put before him. Cardinal Egan welcomes us and talks about the Church's delight at our decision. Then he gets to the reading and devotes the end of his homily to telling the story of how, as a young seminarian when the book The Last Temptation of Christ was published, while conservative Catholic groups were yelling and screaming about its evilness, he rushed out and got it, and reading that portrayal of a thoroughly human Jesus who struggled with temptation brought him back from the brink of a secret crisis of faith that had almost led him away from the Church.

Sitting there in the pew, surrounded by my fellow catechumens, I realized I was crying -- not because of any poignancy in his words, but from the profound connection I had with them. My own encounter with The Last Temptation of Christ came years before I even considered Catholicism -- many more years before this day -- and I have always seen it as a turning point in my personal spiritual journey, the first time I experienced thinking of God in an accessible personal way. But until this moment it had never occurred to me that it had any connection to Catholicism. And here I was, sitting in Saint Patrick's Cathedral, preparing to affirm my intention to become Catholic with the highly powerful symbolism of signing my name in a book, and the Archbishop of my Diocese, a Cardinal of the Church, is talking about the importance of The Last Temptation of Christ in his personal spiritual journey. I was struck by how personal is each of our journeys. I wondered if any of the other catechumens around me had been moved the first time they read or saw The Last Temptation of Christ, if they even knew what it was. Were any of them moved as I was by Cardinal Egan's experience with it? Then I noticed one of my classmates discretely wiping the tear from her cheek.