εὐαγγελίζω (euaggelizo)
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”
“to announce the Good News of victory in battle”
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan
and was led by the Spirit into the desert (ἐρήμῳ, erēmō) for forty days,
to be tempted (πειραζόμενος periazomenos) by the devil.
He ate nothing during those days,
and when they were over he was hungry.”
and was led by the Spirit into the desert (ἐρήμῳ, erēmō) for forty days,
to be tempted (πειραζόμενος periazomenos) by the devil.
He ate nothing during those days,
and when they were over he was hungry.”
Matthew 4:1-2
First Sunday of Lent
First Sunday of Lent
θεωρέω (theoreo)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)
(“to perceive, discover, ponder a deeper meaning”)
Prior to being “led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the Devil,” (Matthew 4:1) Jesus was baptized in the Jordan. Saint Matthew records Jesus’ Baptism as an event that “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), in other words, an event that brings one into proper relational living with the Divine Persons, one another, the true-self and all creation. That relationship is experienced when “the heavens were opened [for Him], and He saw the Spirit of God descending life a Dove [and] coming upon Him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17) What happened at the Jordan is vital to help provide a context for Jesus being “led by the Spirit into the desert.” As “beloved Son,” Jesus goes into the desert like His ancestors did in their journey from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom of the “land flowing with milk and honey.” (Deuteronomy 26:9)
More than just a place, the ἔρημος (erēmos, “desert”) in the Gospels is also an experience or an event. Something happens in the ἔρημος that is essential for living the life of Jesus. As an experience, the desert (ἔρημος, erēmos) offers deliverance from danger and sets one on the path to safety. Admittedly, it is hard to fathom how the hostility of the desert can offer safety. After all, life in the desert is a continuous struggle just to survive, let alone grow, prosper and flourish. But this is precisely what Israel discovered in the silence of the desert as she was drawn from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to the Promised Land. The struggle to live in the ἔρημος along with the vicissitudes of fidelity and infidelity to the Covenant way of living ultimately “tempted” [or “tested, examined, tried true”] (πειραζόμενος, peirazomenos) Israel to receive her identity as the Chosen People. For the Hebrew people, the desert became the way she learned, was formed and experienced her identity: the Chosen People.
For Jesus, He is grounded in His identity as the Divine Son of God and in His human nature, He teaches with His life the desert as a place and an experience for the intensifying of that identity in desert silence. On this point, Cardinal Sarah writes in The Power of Silence:
For Jesus, He is grounded in His identity as the Divine Son of God and in His human nature, He teaches with His life the desert as a place and an experience for the intensifying of that identity in desert silence. On this point, Cardinal Sarah writes in The Power of Silence:
“Silence is of capital importance because it enables the Church to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, imitating his thirty silent years in Nazareth, his forty days and forty nights of fasting and intimate dialogue with the Father in the solitude and silence of the desert. Like Jesus, confronted with the demands of his Father’s will, the Church must seek silence in order to enter ever more deeply into the mystery of Christ. The Church must be the reflection of the light that pours out from Christ.” Silence transforms all aspects of our being: body, mind and heart.
This solitude, as Fr Henri Nouwen wrote in The Way of the Heart, changes us at our core:
“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me—naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken—nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But this struggle is far, far beyond our own strength.”
Nouwen’s last point about the struggle is crucial. Lent is not a time to enter the spiritual olympics and attempt to prove to God ‘I can do it.’ Lent, as all aspects of faithful living in Jesus Christ must be lived in the mode of response. We need the assistance of our Lord in every step of life. Even the penance we undertake during this Season is a response - we can only ‘do’ these acts because of the Grace given to us as pure gift. For that reason, Jesus’ desert experience is the model for Lenten (and beyond) living. In silence, we come to know who we are in the One Who loves infinitely and showers each with all that is needed. (By the way, both these books: The Power of Silence and The Way of the Heart are highly recommended for one’s library of spiritual reading.)
It is therefore no coincidence that in-and-around these early days of Lent the Church celebrates the Rite of Election and the Call to Continual Conversion. This joyful Season is the time of intense, proximate preparation for Baptism-Confirmation-Holy Eucharist wherein the soon-to-be-designated Elect receive the Gift of Divine Adoption – a whole new identity, a whole new creation. It is in this context of Baptism that those who are already configured to Jesus Christ in the waters of rebirth are thrown by the same Spirit into the ἔρημος to have that configuration, that Baptismal identity intensified. That is the reason we RESPOND (in other words, we don’t initiate the holy works) with attentiveness to the works of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Works, not in the sense of ‘earning points,’ not in the sense of a Pelagian spiritual Olympics attempting to prove to God what “I” can do and how good I am. Rather, like Jesus, we permit ourselves to be available to the Spirit who drives us into the testing, the experience, the desert to come to grips with what it means to be a “child of God” who is being formed for immersion into the Water of Life or the renewal of that Baptismal life and identity this Easter.
