It was in the desert where Jesus spent forty days and forty nights before starting His public life (see Mark 1, 12-15). In a sense, our whole religious tradition was born in the desert. It was through the desert that Moses led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. It was from the desert that John the Baptist came to herald the Messiah and, soon after, Jesus followed to proclaim Himself Messiah. The desert is a significant place, but it is also a significant experience. It is the experience of passing through aridness and lifelessness, in order to reach paradise. It is a near-perfect metaphor for the Forty Days of our Lenten experience.
In a typical desert, there is little vegetation, no bird life and, apart from an occasional lizard, almost no animals. The silence is almost total. It has been said that in a desert’s bleak landscape, “nothing comes between man and God.” The Desert Fathers, like St. Anthony of the Desert, held that no life thrives there except the inner life.
In our own times, living now as many of us do, in built-up areas, piled high on top of each other in high-rise apartments, bombarded day and night with the roar of city traffic and the blare of electronic music, we are in danger of losing our desert roots! And we are in danger of losing our inner life. This Lenten season, however, is going to invites us, over and over, to create a time and a space to nurture our spiritual lives. How will we respond to those invitations? Let us not buy into the old myth that we are “busy.” The truth is that we always make time for the things that are important to us.
Preparing for Mass this weekend, let’s remember that the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert. Like Him, then, we should let the Holy Spirit lead us out into the desert for the duration of this Lent. It is there that we can confront the devils and the temptations that haunt our lives. Like Him, we too can triumph over them. He wants to show us the place, but more importantly the experience, where passing through death in order to rise again is not only possible, but necessary.
