On Pilgrimage with our Lord

First Sunday of Lent

Mount of Temptations

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  One of my hopes during this Jubilee Year was to lead a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  There is nothing quite like traveling to the land which our Lord made holy through the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery.  I have been there three times before, but the sites help one go even more deeply into the Gospels by seeing the places where our salvation happened.  As we hear this Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent, I can see in my mind’s eye the Mount of Temptation, which stands near Jericho, the traditional place in the desert where Satan tempted our Lord.  Or, as we get closer to Holy Week, to walk the Way of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem, or stand at Calvary in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and especially to see the empty tomb in that same church.  
    But most people, whether in the past or in the present, could or cannot physically travel to the Holy Land.  In the past it was expensive and dangerous.  Today the expense is more the issue than anything (the holy sites are generally very safe, even right now with the animosity and fighting between Israel and Hamas).  But St. Francis of Assisi developed the Stations of the Cross, originally just for Franciscan churches, to help people draw closer to the saving events of our Lord’s life from a local church.  And even beyond the Stations of the Cross, we are invited to, even if only spiritually, travel with our Lord in these forty days of Lent.
    During Lent we are meant to be on our own pilgrimage with the Lord for forty days.  We spend forty days in the desert, evoking the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert between their exodus from slavery in Egypt to their entrance into the Promised Land, as well as the forty days our Lord spent in the desert after His baptism, leading up to His temptation by Satan.
    The desert of Lent is meant to test us, to see of what we are made, and to discover the areas in which we still need to grow.  If we think back to the Chosen People wandering in the desert, at first they were ecstatic about their freedom.  The Egyptians had given their riches to the Israelites, so the liberated slaves had precious materials for their new home to which they traveled.  But fairly early on, they started to regret leaving Egypt, even though they were slaves there, and wanted to go back because, even with as bad as it was, they were familiar and comfortable with the bad, which seemed better than the unfamiliarity with a future, unknown, good.  They cried to God for water and food, and even created a false god after Moses had gone up to Mount Sinai.  The Promised Land was their home, a land God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but a land they had left some four hundred years earlier, a land they had forgotten.  While the journey to Canaan was not an exceptionally long distance, because of their lack of faith, just as they were at the door of the Promised Land, they had to wander in the desert even longer than originally intended.
    Instead of lacking faith, our Lord’s forty days in the desert demonstrates what Lent is supposed to be: still difficult, still a test, but a test that we can pass because He did.  Our Lord hungered; our Lord thirsted.  But He did not doubt God’s care for Him, and He did not give in to the temptations of the devil.
    If we are honest, we are more like the Israelites than like our Lord.  Our baptism sets us free from Satan and sin, and God gives us the treasure of His grace, His life, to help us on our way home to heaven, our true Promised Land.  But along the way we doubt God.  We do not trust Him to provide all that we need.  We create false gods whom we feel will lead us better.  We forget that we are made for heaven and union with God, and in our selective amnesia, we make our path to God even longer and more difficult than it needs to be.
    So this Lent, our goal as we travel on pilgrimage with Christ is to be more like Him, and less like the Israelites.  As we fast and abstain, as our stomachs growl, we should remember that we do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  As we pray, we do so not to put God to the test, but to bring the desires of our heart to God so that they can be purified and answered according to His will, not to our own insecurities and drive to be in charge.  As we give alms, we recognize that true power does not come from money and possessions, the false gods that we create, but from worshipping God alone and allowing Him to exult us.  
    While the desert is difficult, and tests us to trust more in God and less in ourselves, the desert is not forever.  God does not abandon us to wander around for eternity.  Christ has opened heaven by His Death and Resurrection, and wants us to end up there if we will follow His path through the desert.  The pilgrimage to heaven may be difficult at times, and we may want to turn back to what comforts we think that slavery to sin gives us, or look to other gods of our own making that we think we can control.  But if we follow Christ this Lent, and truly seek to allow Him to put to death in us anything which is not of Him, we will find the Promised Land where angels will minister to us as we worship in perfect happiness our true God: [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen]

Into the Lenten Desert

First Sunday of Lent

St. Anthony being attacked by demons

    St. Anthony of the Desert, also known as St. Anthony of Egypt, is considered the Father of Monks.  According to St. Athanasius, who wrote his biography, St. Anthony, while twenty years old, heard the Gospel of the rich young man, that, in order to be happy, he had to sell his riches and follow Christ.  So he got rid of most of his possessions and land, gave his sister into the care of some local Christian virgins (no one knows how she took his decision), and eventually went into the wilderness of Egypt, and lived to the ripe old age of 105 (a blessing in addition to having the name Anthony).
    Why does St. Anthony go into the desert?  Why does Jesus go into the desert after His baptism, as heard in the Gospel today?  What’s the big deal with deserts?
    To begin with, it was the opposite of where man was supposed to be.  We heard in Genesis how God put Adam and Eve into a garden in Eden.  The garden had everything they needed for food and sustenance, and apparently it was warm enough where walking around without clothes wasn’t a problem, so certainly, the garden was not in Michigan!  But the point is that gardens are places of life, whereas deserts are places of death.
    For the Israelites, the desert was also the place of great testing after the Exodus from Egypt.  Recall that the desert was where the Israelites wandered for 40 years, after they doubted that God could take care of the giants who were occupying the land of Canaan, where God had promised to settle the Chosen People. 
    Last, but not least, just as the garden was seen as the property of God, the source of life, so the desert was seen as the property of the devil, the source of death.  At the Day of Atonement, the priests would send the goat, who had previously received the sins of the nation on it, into the desert to be handed over to the demon Azazel. 
    So Jesus, and St. Anthony in imitation of Him, goes into the desert, and there He is tempted.  Both Jesus and St. Anthony went there to battle Satan.  St. Matthew writes in his account of the Gospel that Jesus battled Satan verbally (Jesus, of course, won).  St. Athanasius records that St. Anthony was tempted in the desert with all sorts of temptations, and St. Anthony did not give in to those temptations; he won his contest. 
    For us, then, Lent is going into the desert.  The desert isn’t a fun place, but it’s a necessary place for us to grow in our relationship with God.  It’s a place of battle, and that means we have to fight.  But it’s the only way to get back to the garden.  In Lent we fight against our fallen earthly desires in order that our desire for heaven can be strengthened.  In Lent we fight against our temptations to sin, to be disobedient to God and obedient to Satan.  In Lent, we fight against hiding from God because of our shame, and we run to God to ask Him to heal the wounds the sin has created and clothe us with His holiness. 
    Lent is a privileged time to grow in holiness.  Jesus didn’t grow in holiness when He went into the desert, because He is holiness Himself.  But He gave us an example so that we could grow in holiness.  St. Anthony grew in holiness when he went into the desert, and gave us an example of how fasting, extra prayer, and concentrating on our relationship with God transform us by the power of God’s grace into the man or woman that God wants us to be. 
    Entering the desert for us can be more time for silence.  Not only for the young, but especially for the young, silence can feel like death!  To a society so used to having access to the internet all the time on the phone, or music all the time, or some sort of stimulus for our ears and eyes, silence can seem as barren as a sea of sand.  But it’s also a great way to become more accustomed to hearing the Word of God, which often is only audible in silence.
    Entering the desert for us can be making more time for prayer: speaking with and listening to God.  It seems like every year we get more and more things to do, and prayer often gets shoved out of the way, even before we ditch exercise!  And yet, without prayer, we can’t thrive as God wants us to thrive.  Again, it may feel deadly to set aside even another 5 minutes each day to tell God what’s on our hearts, and to listen to hear what God’s heart wants to say to us.  But it’s also a great way to know if we are following God’s will or our own will.
    As we enter this Lenten season, this Lenten desert, let’s follow the example of Jesus, and the example of St. Anthony.  Let’s go into the desert to fight our temptations and to do battle with Satan, a battle that we can assuredly win if we’re connected to Christ, as St. Anthony was.  Don’t be afraid of the dryness of the desert; don’t be afraid that it’s too difficult.  Enter the desert with Christ and St. Anthony, as a way to enter the Garden when we come to Easter.

Into the Desert

First Sunday of Lent

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus…was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.”  Did you hear that first line of the Gospel, or did it go by unnoticed?  Listen to it again: “Filled withe the Holy Spirit, Jesus…was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.”  If we’re listening to it, it should jostle us a little.  It should lead us to ask, ‘Why would the Holy Spirit lead Jesus into the desert?’  

The desert, after all, is a place of trial and death.  It’s the opposite of the place God first intended for humanity, which was a garden, the Garden of Eden.  God also led the Chosen People through the desert, but the desert wasn’t a happy place for them.  The goal was the Promised Land, the “land flowing with milk and honey.”  The desert was where they had to wander due to their lack of faith in God, and it is the place where they grumbled against God, even though He was providing for all their needs.  So why would God the Holy Spirit lead Jesus (God the Son) there?

Jesus goes into the desert to show us how to fight against temptation.  Jesus was like us in all ways except sin.  He shows us that, when we unite our humanity, our nature, to the divinity of God, God’s nature, we can resist in the desert what Adam and Eve did not resist in the garden.  While not for Jesus, for us, the desert is a time of purification, helping us to grow in our relationship with God and to trust in Him to provide all that we need.

Lent for us is that time of purification, of growing in our relationship with God, of trusting in God to provide for all our needs.  It is the desert.  It is not the destination, not the goal, but the way by which we reach our destination and goal.  It is the place where God puts to death temptation and sin, and prepares us for the life of paradise.  It is what makes us ready for the life of paradise, the life of the Promised Land.  And the Holy Spirit leads us there, not to stay there, but to get to the Promised Land.

Right now we are in the desert as a Church.  We are in a time of purification, where temptation and sin are being put to death.  We could talk about the different issues that are plaguing the Church right now.  But those are simply symptoms of the problem.  The heart of the problem is that we, as a society, have given in to the second temptation of Satan from today’s Gospel.  

The enemy tempted Jesus, “‘I shall give to you all this power and glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.  All this will be yours if you worship me.’”  We, as a society, and therefore as individuals, have decided to worship false gods, mostly the self and pleasure, for the sake of power and glory.  We abandoned the worship of the true God who leads us to paradise, and we have reveled in the worship of false gods who lead us to death and destruction.

We see it in politics, where money and power have become ultimate goods, and people are told what they want to hear, not what is right.  The personal pleasure of each individual has become the supreme good to which everything–the child in the womb, the elderly who are sick or dying, the natural law written into our very human nature–has to be subjected.  So many politicians, across party lines, do whatever will get them money from donors and reelected, not what is best for the country and its citizens.

We see it also in our sacred liturgy.  My formative years were where most of the songs and most of the focus at Mass was on me: what makes me feel good; how can I be affirmed as a person; and how much God loved me as I am.  Now, feeling good can be good; personal affirmation can be good; and God does love me unconditionally.  But feeling good is only good when it comes from doing good and avoiding evil.  Affirmation of what is noble is good, but we should feel shame for doing what is base.  God loves me as I am, but He loves me too much to leave me there; He calls me each day to conversion.  We are tempted to narcissism, exercises on focusing on the self, rather than God.  But, as Jesus reminds us, “‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”

How often do we hear: I don’t like the music, so I’m leaving the church.  I don’t like the preaching, so I’m leaving the church.  I don’t like the priest, so I’m leaving the church.  The common denominator is that the person is not going to church for God, but for what he likes.  But we don’t come to Mass because of what we like.  We come to give thanks to God for what He did by giving us Jesus so that we could go to heaven.

The Holy Spirit has led the Church into the desert because we have given in to temptation to worship false gods, often the self.  We need to be purified from societal narcissism and be drawn back to the transcendent God, who draws us from ourselves to Him who satisfies all our needs.  Following God doesn’t always feel good; the desert is dry and hot.  Following God doesn’t always affirm our actions; the desert requires us to put away what is ancillary.  Following God means that we say no to the temptations that arise in our daily life which look enticing, but which really keep us out of the garden and paradise.  But, if we follow God through the desert, if we say no to the temptations, especially the false gods we make in our life, then it leads to the Promised Land, to the garden, to place that God has prepared for those who follow His Son.  So during this Lent, follow the Holy Spirit into the desert and fight temptation, empowered by that same Spirit, who with the Father and the Son is one God, for ever and ever.

Jump In! The Water's Great!!

First Sunday of Lent

            For many young children, and this was certainly true in my own life, there’s nothing quite as fun and as scary as water.  Right now we’d all probably love it to be a little warmer, so let’s think about a pool or a lake in the hot summer sun.  The adults are all in, splashing around, swimming, maybe diving if it’s safe.  And the little kid is waiting on the shore or on the patio, wondering if it really is ok to jump in.  All the adults say it’s fine, that you’ll naturally float.  And yet, it’s hard to trust that water.

            Water for the ancients was a sign of chaos and death.  In the beginning of the Book of Genesis, God separates the land from the water and orders the earth.  But the waters were still chaotic.  Imagine an early mariner trying to navigate the seas, when storms seem to pop up from nowhere, and currents take you places you do not want to go.  Even those who wanted to enjoy the water for recreation had to beware of the undertow and strong waves that could do real damage.

            This idea of the danger of water was reaffirmed in the story of Noah and the Great Flood.  Water becomes the agent of God wiping out the evil of the earth, and from which Noah and his family are saved by the ark.  And this is why St. Peter sees baptism as prefigured in the story of the Great Flood: in baptism, the elect go down, under the water, symbolizing the death of Christ, and then they rise to new life as they are pulled up from the water.  Just like Noah, Christians are saved from the destruction of chaos, this time not by a boat, but by Jesus Christ.

            With all this talk about baptism, you might think we’re celebrating the Baptism of the Lord. Even our Gospel passage is situated immediately after Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan by St. John the Baptist.  But that was over a month ago in January.  We’re still in Lent.  So why all this talk about baptism?

            This Lent is a microcosm of what happens to us after our baptism.  Just like with Jesus, as He was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit after His baptism, so, too, after our baptism do we begin a time of wandering in the desert, guided by the Holy Spirit, waiting to come to the end of our penitential pilgrimage to the joys of the heavenly Kingdom. 

            After we are baptized, we have grace from God to follow him, which is why we often baptize children: because we know they need the grace so they can eventually make it out of the desert and into the oasis of heaven.  But let’s be honest, there are a number of times where, unlike Jesus, we fall to the temptations of Satan.  Still, our entire lives are trying to pass through the desert of a sinful world and make it to the oasis, the garden of heaven, after the example of Jesus’ 40 days in the desert.

            And, just like Jesus, who had angels ministering to him among the wild beasts, we, too have angels helping us on our way through this Valley of Tears.  Our post-baptismal time is not only a time of suffering and self-denial, but is also a time of joy as we celebrate happy occasions.  But, even with these happy occasions, the fact remains that we’re not at the destination yet, and that is the source of our sadness.  As St. Paul says, while we are in the body (here on earth), we are away from our eternal home (where our body will be free from all that limits us and drags us down). 

            So how do we make it through this desert?  How do we come to the oasis?  We progress in the desert as we progress in the spiritual life.  The more we say yes to God and no to sin, the further along we are.  Sometimes we’re like the Israelites, who were not far from the Promised Land, but who, because of sin, had to wander around a while because they lost their way by not trusting in God.  When we sin, we start walking away from God and away from heaven, and start walking to hell, which is exactly the place we don’t want to be. 

            So through our penitential practices, we’re trying to train the body to recognize the signs of approaching the Promised Land.  By denying ourselves good things, we train ourselves to recognize the One who is Goodness Himself, and from whom all things, which are good, get their goodness.  Through increased prayer, whether increasing the time with the Lord, or increasing the quality of time we spend with the Lord, we get directions for how to arrive quickly to that Promised Land and start receiving some of its goodness even here on earth.

            The good news is that Jesus has gone before us and blazed the trail for us through the desert.  If we follow His path, then we know we’ll arrive at the same place he did.  Of course, on that path is the cross, and some of us would rather avoid that.  But the only way to get to the resurrection is through the cross.  So if we want to share in the Paradise of Heaven, then we have to pass through the Desert of Suffering and unite it with Jesus’ own sufferings.  But, we’re not alone; we also have myriad of saints who can help us along the way, both by seeing where they went and how they arrived at heaven, as well as by their assistance through our prayers to them for their help in our own pilgrimage. 

            We, like the saints who help us, are called to help the catechumens as they prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist, and the candidates as they prepare to make their profession of faith, and are then confirmed and receive the Eucharist.  (At this Mass, we will send them to Bishop Boyea with our prayers as their desires for union with the Church are accepted by our local Good Shepherd).  In the back of the Church we have an opportunity to take a slip of paper with a name of a catechumen or candidate so that, as they prepare for full initiation, they know that we are supporting them as they prepare to join us on the straight and narrow road that baptism provides to the Kingdom. 

            Jesus Christ has shown us the way, because He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.  During this Lenten season of penance, let’s remember and recommit ourselves to following His Way, so that we can pass through this desert, this Valley of Tears, and come to the Paradise promised to those who follow Him faithfully.