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Jesus
has fasted 40 days and nights, says the Gospel.
He needs food; he experiences through lack of the necessities of life
the fragility and limitations of his humanity.
Another man would desire not only food but reassurance, a sense of
returning bodily and mental powers.
Satan, seeing his chance to play on natural weakness, introduces his
“ifs”. He questions Jesus’ identity: if
you are the son of God, command these stones to become bread; if you are
the son of God, throw yourself off the pinnacle of the Temple; if you
will fall down and worship me, I will give you the kingdoms of the world and
their glory. The devil thus offers to
satisfy Jesus’ corporeal needs and supposed aspirations. We know how he responded. The devil is unable
to satisfy anything, yet every word that comes from God is all sufficient; the
angelic protection makes it superfluous to prove that he is a wonder-worker; he
finds satisfaction only in the pre-eminence of the Father’s praise. Later in the Gospels we learn that he
regarded the Father’s will as his food and drink; that the Father never leaves
him alone, never lets him out of his sight; that his one desire on earth is to
glorify and serve the Father. The
extrinsic temptations by the devil, therefore, have no leverage with him: the
Father suffices.
Jesus is driven into the desert by the
Holy Spirit. In contrast, Elijah is
propelled into the wilderness by his fear.
“He flees in fear,” comments Adrienne von Speyr, “but he also flees into
deeper fear.” In his flight from Jezebel
he forgets momentarily the sufficiency of God.
His own inevitably dries up. “It
is enough. Now, O Lord, take away my
life” (1Kgs 19). “He beseeches God
that it may be enough, because he has had enough” (von Speyr). God ignores this prayer, or at least the
specific request of the prayer. Instead,
he makes Elijah sleep and rest and eat a supernatural bread, which strengthens
him for the 40 days’ journey to Horeb.
In this way, he is like us, who need spiritual food during the Lenten
journey. He is unlike Jesus, who is
ministered to by angels, only after 40 days in the desert (cf Elijah: Adrienne von Speyr).
At
Horeb, Elijah meets God, but on God’s own terms. He is commanded to leave the cave for the
divine encounter; and he obeys.
Obedience is the sign of trust in the sufficiency of God. In fitting response, God does not show
himself in the storm or earthquake or fire but in the still, small voice. It is almost nothing, in order to prove to
Elijah that God alone truly does suffice; He does not need to announce Himself
in a grand show of portents, but in something which can almost be missed,
unless one is attuned to it in humility.
Again in humility, Elijah does not seek to see God face to face; the
bare knowledge of His presence suffices.
Says Adrienne von Speyr: “The beautiful thing is that this is enough for
a whole life.” We grasp God’s fullness
in the way that God wills. We can grasp
it in dry contemplation, without signs and wonders; in the Eucharist we gaze on
a veiled Deity and are satisfied.
In
the parable of the Prodigal Son, our Lord describes an entry into a moral
wilderness. The younger son is
dissatisfied with life in his father’s house; he lays claim to what he thinks
is better, thus qualifying what is already good. But he misunderstands the nature of the Good;
he goes deeper and deeper into the desert, failing test after test. Far from finding satisfaction, he begins to
be in want (Lk 15:14); he finds himself coveting even the pig swill. Then he realises that, whereas he has
abandoned his privileged position next to the father’s heart, even the “hired
servants have bread enough and to spare.”
He retraces the painful journey back through the wilderness, hoping to
settle for the “enough” of the lowest place.
Even this unremarkable conversion suffices to restore him to the
father’s love, which in truth had never changed. On the son’s return, not only does he receive
a mere sufficiency but a superabundance.
The father’s “enough” is extreme riches, which he proceeds to lavish on
him beyond all his expectation. Thus,
even the experience of a desert of one’s own making leads to a new strength, a
new wisdom and gratitude. It is the
elder son who now has to understand that everything is supplied in his present
condition; he too needs a new knowledge of the wealth he already possesses.
Finally,
there is the example of the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:1-42), who, on the face
of it, is contented with her life. She
has pitched her tent, so to speak, on the outskirts of the desert; yet there
are signs that her life does not entirely satisfy her. She is on her sixth husband (one of whom had
still to earn the title); and, after our Lord’s pedagogy she betrays a yearning
for something greater than the water of the well, even though she still
conceives of it in material terms: “Sir, give me this water that I may not
thirst” (15). She has begun to think of
a water which will always satisfy. Jesus
explains patiently that he is the Provider of a spring of water of spirit and
truth, which wells up to eternal life.
Thus, unlike Satan, the desert-dweller who seeks to trap and enslave
those who camp in his domain, Jesus guides her away from her comfortable
wasteland to seek the inexhaustible source of the Spirit.
What
of us in all of this? Armed with the
weapons of obedience, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and the blessing of the Church,
we voluntarily enter the desert, the sacred season of Lent, in company with our
Lord. It can seem an empty landscape
(désertique in the French, a term without an English equivalent). During these 40 days, we aim to live lives of
greater purity and of expiation of our faults; we abstain from certain things;
we can expect to be tested by the unexpected.
We submit to all of this, because satis
est nobis. Like Elijah, we feed on
spiritual food, that is on the Holy Eucharist and scripture and our Lenten
book. Like the Prodigal Son, we retrace
steps that may have wandered into negligence, even betrayal and unkindnesses,
knowing that the Father expects us joyfully.
Like the Samaritan woman, we shake off the power of habit and sloth, in
order to see with new eyes that we have the spring of life within us. Above all, we accompany Jesus to Calvary,
there to die to self by the strength of his all-sufficing grace.
In
the Ash Wednesday liturgy, we hear that we are dust and shall return thither. We wear it as a badge upon our heads. We are only clay that would be foolish to
contend with its maker (Is 45:9).
Yet we are right not to be satisfied with our condition as dust or clay;
we become, by grace, what the potter intends to make of us. Like the dry bones of Ezekiel 37, the
Spirit’s breath makes us stand upon our feet and live. Isaiah even bids us rejoice: “O dwellers in
the dust, awake and sing for joy” (Is 26:19). St Benedict does likewise; for him Lent,
culminating in Easter joy, is the monk’s or nun’s participation in the paschal
mystery. Certain, therefore, that our
Lord will supply all we need, since he is all we need, we gird ourselves
and set out for Jerusalem.
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