First Sunday of Lent (OF) - The Desert

Today in the ancient Church was the usual beginning of the Lenten season, and this is shown for us even in this new liturgy by the use of the Gospel account of Christ’s 40 days in the desert and His subsequent temptation by Satan before entering into His public ministry.  It marks our own entry into the 40 days of preparation before the Easter festivities, from which the Latin name for Lent comes (Quadragesima - Latin for 40).  While we are still encouraged to celebrate Sunday as the day of the Resurrection, we are today called to a quieter celebration, because the Church desires us to recall today and throughout these accompanying days the reason for the season.  We receive hints of this reason in the texts of that we have heard this day.

Why is it that Jesus goes out into the desert for 40 days, fasting and praying the whole time?  The first hint is found in the number of days, which should recall to our minds the 40 years of journeying in the desert by the Israelites during the Exodus.  The number 40 is associated throughout the Scriptures with periods of testing or judgment or purification.  Each use is ultimately tied to that chronological number for the Exodus, that period when God tested and purified ancient Israel before they received the reward of the Promised Land.  What we see, then, in Christ’s 40 days in the desert is an image or reflection of the 40 years of the Exodus.

Our Lord also goes into the desert so as to begin His great work of salvation.  Most of the Gospel accounts tell how, after His baptism by John in the Jordan, He is lead by the Spirit into the desert. After the revelation of Jesus as the Christ, the Anointed One, in His Baptism, He seems to hide away from the public life in the worst of all places.  The desert is a vast wasteland, seemingly empty of life or the ability to maintain life.  Why must Christ begin in the desert?  Christ begins in the desert because of what humanity did in the Garden.

Think back to the very beginning of the Scriptures, of the story of our salvation.  At their creation, our first parents were placed in a rich garden teeming with life all about it.  Water flows freely, the plants seem to cover every square inch, the animals roam about at ease.  Everything is beautiful and flourishing, until Adam and Eve partake in the first sin.  With their disobedience, God exiles humanity from the flourishing garden so as to work the earth for their daily bread, from which man must toil and labor excessively for the little that he needs to survive.

The desert, then, that Jesus enters is a symbol of the state of humanity at this point.  We had been fruitful and plentiful in the garden, but with our fall from grace, we had become barren by sin.  This is what sin does to each one of us.  It strips us of our original holiness and points us towards death.  It makes us fruitless and barren in our spiritual life, leaving us in a state where faith does not flourish, where hope has no haven, and where love is lost for all.

It is our sinfulness which leaves us barren and without any life, but God does not leave us in this state.  The journey of Jesus through the desert is meant to mark the beginning of the revitalization of humanity, of restoring us to our original, fruitful, and vivifying state with God.  It is to fulfill what is promised by the prophet Isaiah: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the lily it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing.” (35:1-2)  The desert of sinful humanity shall be transformed by the humanity of the God-man who comes to undo sin with His obedience and His holiness.

But a desert can only flourish if there is water.  From where shall come the water that shall revitalize our spiritual deserts?  This spiritual water is the grace of God won for us through the merits of Christ’s Passion and Death, that water and blood which pours forth from the pierced side of our Savior.  It is only by His grace that we are able to begin to bear fruit in our lives and be transformed from spiritual deserts to spiritual gardens.  That grace was first given to us at our baptism, when we died with Christ and rose again with Him to new life.  But, just as a garden must be maintained with water or else it will die, so too must our spiritual life be maintained by our continual contact with Christ, or else we shall run the risk of returning to that state of barrenness and death in which we were conceived.

If we are to maintain our spiritual fecundity, we must remain close to Christ through His sacraments and through our daily life.  Lent in particular is the means whereby we refocus our lives towards the Lord of all who enriches all who call upon Him, as Saint Paul tells us in our second reading.  If we indeed believe the message of the Gospel - the proclamation of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection - if we believe this not as a logical reasoning but as the article of faith that it is, then indeed we will be saved from sin and death.  If we do not, then we separate ourselves from the only one who can give us life and joy now and for all eternity, and we make ourselves the property of the devil, as he makes claim in our Gospel today.

Let us not delay in admitting our weakness and our failure to live up to the Gospel up to now.  Let us realize more quickly than ever before our complete need for God’s grace and mercy to help us be what we were meant to be.  Let us cry out to the Lord to be with us in our time of trouble, so that we may, by His help, overcome our own temptations just as He did the same in the desert.  Let us not remain barren deserts void of growth and vitality, but let us be renewed this Lent by the sacraments, especially the sacrament of Confession, so as to become fruitful and alive.  Let us pray, fast, and give, so as to reflect our spiritual fecundity in our own lives.  May we be nourished by the water of God’s grace so as to be fruitful and alive both now, and for the life to come.

Ash Wednesday

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This phrase accompanies the imposition of ashes upon those who are prepared to enter into the mysteries of Lent. It conveys a depth of meaning when understood in connection to the Scriptures. What is meant by this particular phrase? Why was it chosen to be the message connected with ashes? And how can it shape our Lenten journey?

This phrase about dust to dust is found at the very beginning of Genesis.  It occurs after the creation of the universe and of humanity, and it follows after the gift of the garden given by God to Adam and Eve.  We know what happens all too well in the garden: the serpent tempts our first parents to disobedience, to partaking of the forbidden fruit, and causes them to commit the first sin, that sin which has corrupted humanity ever since and has lead to a multitude of sins.  It is this mystery of iniquity which leads to the utterance of the phrase we are considering.

When God discovers that Adam and Eve have disobeyed Him, He exiles them from the garden as a punishment for their sin.  But it is not the only punishment that is imposed upon them. Eve is condemned to pain in childbirth, while Adam is condemned to labor strenuously for his daily bread.  But to both of them, and to all of us in turn, God makes this declaration: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

With this phrase, God reminds us of what Saint Paul will declare much later: “The wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 6:23) The consequences of that first sin, and, in fact, of all sin, is the termination of our lives.  This phrase, then, in conjunction with the ashes, is meant to evoke for us the terrifying reality that we are bound for death, and that there is nothing we can do to stop it.  It is meant to draw us into consideration of the fact that not only Adam and Eve’s sins, but my own sins have brought about this inescapable truth: that, as John Donne wrote, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” (Meditation XVII)

Lent is meant to be a season of sorrow and woe: sorrow over the reality of sin, and woe over the reality of death.  But if that was the end of the story, if that was all that could be said about our situation, then truly every day should be a time of sorrow and woe.  We would either fall into despair over the miserable state of our human condition or we would try to divert our attention with ephemeral pleasures, never acknowledging or facing reality as it is.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  There is a glimmer of hope upon the horizon as we once more keep this solemn fast.  It is the hope founded throughout all the prophets and holy people of the Old Testament.  It is the hope expressed particularly by Joel in our first reading when he commands all the Israelites to cry out, “Spare, O Lord, your people!” It is the hope that is embodied in the One whose birth we have so recently celebrated, and whose ultimate reason for living shall be revealed to us through this season.

As we begin this season, let us not merely be sorrowful, but let us be attentive to what it is that Jesus proclaims to us.  Let us cling to every word He proclaims, the word of truth and freedom, the word of salvation and redemption, the word of love and mercy.  Let us receive this word and be transformed by it over these next 40 days, so that we may learn not only the sorrows of this mortal life, but the joy that comes in Christ. Let us be sorry for our sins which have caused all this and express this sorrow through our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Let us remember that we are dust, but let us learn how to be more than that, and how to overcome the final enemy of death in the passion and death of Christ, so that we may live on in the full splendor of His Resurrection.