“Led By The Spirit Into The Desert”
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the Devil.”
War, betrayal, propaganda. Christians on both sides led into death and destructive conflict by leaders with agendas for domination and expansion or corrupt puppets bought by and sold to the highest evil bidder. Good bishops fired while bad bishops are protected by the highest men in the Church on their way to conviction for heinous crimes. An innocent cardinal convicted and imprisoned while guilty men go free. Our world and our Church are replete with these and more examples of injustice and a world in need of God and faith.
But our own salvation comes first. We must do all we can to right wrongs and bring justice to a world in need. But we cannot give what we do not have. Lent is the time above all others to clean our own house and get our own lives in order. “We have here no lasting city”: The person with no plan for the future suffers from the greatest foolishness.
So how to go about getting to Heaven? We are so often tempted by the Devil as we read Jesus was in the Gospel. We experience “deserts” when we feel alone before the world and helpless in temptation. But this is because we so often try to live only under our own resources. We have to learn what Jesus teaches by His example in the first Lent, His forty days in the desert. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart.”
Jesus Christ, true God, yes, but at the same true Man, went into the desert armed with the power of His Father through grace by faith, but He had to choose to do so. He teaches us that we must make that same choice if we are to share in His victory over sin and death at the end of the Lent of this life and this world, a desert in comparison with the glory and joy of Heaven, our true homeland.
“You shall worship the Lord, your God, and Him alone shall you serve.”
Worship here together of the Lord Jesus, who shows us the Father, is our oasis in the desert and our training for the life we lead in the “desert” of daily life with its challenges and difficulties, but also with its hopes and dreams. Faith made strong by worship is the armor we wear into battle for our salvation in Christ. Our intimacy with the Word of God in Scripture makes it possible for the Word to be “near” us, in our mouths for prayer and proclamation and in our hearts by love for Him.
“He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you”: How does the temptation of Christ help us? By showing us the way of escape to freedom by means of the grace He guarantees to us. We are given Jesus Christ in our sacramental life, above all in the Eucharist, so that we will be guarded and guided as He was by grace together with the saints and angels who intercede for us. Grace is the life of Christ in us.
“The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of His own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification.
“‘Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1999).
Christ is our Savior: We are saved by grace through, with, and by faith in Him. Above all in the Holy Eucharist our Lord accompanies us each day through our lives as a pilgrimage of faith, always seeking the goal of eternal life.
“In an ancient prayer the Church acclaims the mystery of the Eucharist: ‘O sacred banquet in which Christ is received as food, the memory of his Passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace and a pledge of the life to come is given to us.’ If the Eucharist is the memorial of the Passover of the Lord Jesus, if by our communion at the altar we are filled ‘with every heavenly blessing and grace,’ then the Eucharist is also an anticipation of the heavenly glory” (CCC, n. 1402).
In our Lenten pilgrimage we emphasize the nature of the world as a desert because our true homeland is Heaven. Our life on Earth is always in the nature of “pilgrimage” or “journey” because we do not have here all we need to be complete, happy, or fulfilled. In the gift and mystery of the Eucharist our Lord is yet veiled in mystery, present as He is under the signs of bread and wine.
“The Church knows that the Lord comes even now in his Eucharist and that he is there in our midst. However, his presence is veiled. Therefore we celebrate the Eucharist ‘awaiting the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ,’ asking ‘to share in your glory when every tear will be wiped away. On that day we shall see you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and praise you forever through Christ our Lord’” (CCC, n. 1404).
We are never alone in the desert of temptation for He is with us always, as He promised, even until the end of the world. He sends His angel to guard us, to guide us on our way, just as He was attended by angels during the 40 days of His “quarantine.”
Our fasting, prayer, and almsgiving of Lent began with the ashes which reminded us we are dust, and to dust we shall return. All of these Lenten reminders and practices are meant to enable us to cling all the more to what lasts, forsaking what will one day end.
In Christ the ashes of our human flesh are joined to the Spirit of God in an unbreakable union, tested by and victorious over death itself. To be without fear is to be Eucharistic, for the victory of Christ is ours completely only in the Blessed Sacrament. For this reason Communion for the dying is known as “viaticum”: to “go with you.”
“In addition to the Anointing of the Sick, the Church offers those who are about to leave this life the Eucharist as viaticum. Communion in the body and blood of Christ, received at this moment of ‘passing over’ to the Father, has a particular significance and importance. It is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection, according to the words of the Lord: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.’ The sacrament of Christ once dead and now risen, the Eucharist is here the sacrament of passing over from death to life, from this world to the Father” (CCC, n. 1524).
Thank you for reading. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
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