I call your attention to the first sentence in today’s
Gospel: “Jesus was led by the Spirit
into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”
Jesus finding himself in the desert being tempted by the devil was not
the result of bad luck or being at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sometimes we can find ourselves in the desert of
disappointment or failure, not led by the Spirit of God’s love but rather they
are the result of bad choices we have made.
Our desire for pleasure, power, or greed can sometimes get the best of
us and lead us into the wilderness. In
fact, none of us want to be judged just on the basis of the dumbest choices we
have made in life.
But with Jesus, he is being led by the Spirit of God’s love
into the desert to be tempted by the devil to use his power in ways that are
not in God’s plan. The devil was
tempting Jesus to become the Messiah without the cross. The devil was tempting Jesus to take the
short cut to achieve his power as the Messiah.
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be humbled,
to be tested and tempted, to struggle with the forces of evil and thereby fully
trust in God’s plan for His life. The
Lenten journey of Jesus was for 40 days and 40 nights in the desert wrestling
with the forces of darkness.
My question for you and for me is what desert have we been
led by the Spirit of God’s love to be humbled, to be tested and tempted to
validate our faith and trust in Jesus as the Lord and Savior of our lives?
As you have grieved the loss of someone you dearly love, as
you have dealt with illness in your life and the in the life of a dear family
member, as you have been hurt and your confidence has been betrayed, as you
have had to deal with more than your fair share of challenges, can you see
these experiences as being led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by
the devil. Can these life wrenching
experiences be example of how you are being led by the Spirit into the desert?
This I know: God’s
loves you with an everlasting love. You
are precious and glorious in the sight of God.
Yet, as with Jesus himself, the cross and the desert are a part of your
life and mine.
A fundamental temptation for us is forgetting the Lord and
the ways He has blessed us. All of us
wrestle with the Lord a bit on our spiritual journey. In one moment, we turn our lives over to the
Lord. In the next moment, we are tempted
by food or power or recognition. We can
too easily lose our spiritual footing.
The way the tempter dealt with Jesus is how the tempter deals
with us – offering us discipleship of the Lord Jesus minus the cross in our
life. The cross is part of who Jesus is,
and it is an enduring sign of His unconditional love for us. The Lenten season invites us to recognize the
cross in our spiritual journey.
The Stations of the Cross describe the stages of the
suffering and death of Jesus. As we
experience the stations of the cross of illness, of death, of brokenness in our
own stories, may we too get the help of Simon of Cyrene and be strengthened by the love of Mary our
mother. As for Jesus, our own stations
of the cross are our way of discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Lord God, it is risky to let ourselves be led by the
Spirit. We make an act of trust in you
today, letting ourselves be guided by you, confident the devil will eventually
leave us and angels will appear to look after us.
Lord, our faith community of St Joseph’s also is led into
the desert to be tempted by the devil.
We would like see more people in the pews each and every Sunday; we
would like to have more robust social justice initiatives; we would like our
youth to be more involved in our faith formation initiatives, and so forth and
so forth.
We would like simple solutions to each of these challenges –
perhaps just a simple resolution of the parish council -- preferably without
the cross and the accompanying struggle.
May we always remember that we are led by the Spirit into the
desert. There is a method to the divine
madness. As with Jesus, we need to trust
in God’s plan even when we lose a bit of control in the outcome.
You may ask why in the world need we to choose spiritual disciplines
in the Lenten season as our life circumstances provide us with enough desert
experiences that are not of our choosing.
The Lenten journey of our choosing is a quiet, humble,
simple journey that was begun with ashes being placed on our foreheads.
These Lenten disciplines help us to encounter Christ and to
live our lives trusting in God’s plan for us.
Discipline and discipleship go together as surely night follows
day. May we value each of the Lenten
disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
As disciples of Jesus, our prayer is our conversation. It is being in the presence of our God. It is the gratitude we express for the
blessings of life we enjoy. May your
Lenten prayer include a desert solitude – simply slowing down, being quiet,
being still in God’s presence, and prayer without words. May our Lenten prayer include the Sacrament
of Reconciliation in which we return to the Lord our God.
May we embrace the discipline of fasting to simplify our
lives in some way – through fasting from food or fasting from some activity –
in order to more fully rely on Jesus being the nourishment that we seek and the
moral compass of our lives.
May we embrace the discipline of almsgiving to share what we
have been given with those in need. Our discipleship of Jesus can never be
divorced from the needs of God’s poor.
For the desert experience that we choose in this Lenten
season and for the desert experience that has been chosen for us, may we be led
by the Spirit of God’s love to trust more fully in God’s plan for our lives.
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Have a blessed day.
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