DOMINICA I IN QUADRAGESIMA
5 MARCH 2017
The First Sunday in Lent
IN DESERTO CORDIS MEI
IN THE DESERT OF MY HEART, may Christ be my stronghold against temptation, for it is here that the voice of the tempter is most alluring; calling me not to grand outward displays of evil, for that would be too crass for the serpent, but to the whispering of evils in the mind and heart which veil the soul from its divine source and suffocate it with doubt and fear.
The Christian life most certainly finds expression in active charity, and the Lord knows the daily trial of temptations to act against charity. But the wellspring of our external acts of love is our interior life of love for God, and his for us, sustained by prayer and our participation in the Sacramental life of the Church. To what end should the former subsist without the latter? Saint Paul has the answer, “I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal ... I am nothing ... I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1b,2b,3b). And the Devil is aware of this. And where he might not yet succeed to tempt the good man to acts of manifest evil, he woos the mind and courts the heart with the attentiveness of a lover.
It is in the desert of the interior life, to which we retreat in solitude to encounter God in the silence of prayer that disposes us to listen, that we are given the setting for our most intimate encounter with God, for it is here that the Spirit dwells within us. Yet, without cultivation, this desert falls barren and in its cold shadows the roaring lion of 1 Peter 5:8 prowls about, seeking to devour any remnant of the faith, hope, and charity infused there by God. It is there that the deceiver confronts us with propositions that make us doubt that we are sons of God. With wily charm and insidious seductiveness he gilds his lies until they appear to have the ring of truth, and we fall, as did Eve, in prideful distrust of the one true love.
He begins with empathy for our struggle to cultivate our interior disposition to God. Just as he came to Christ in his fast with the solution to his hunger, so too does he come to us immersed in our time-pressed lives, to suggest a more humane approach to prayer that allows more time for much-needed rest, for family, for friends, for absolutely anything that feels good for the body but distracts us from the good of our souls. He comes to us at the end of the day to give comfort in our examination of conscience, offering a false mercy of our own creation; urging us to slowly lower our guard against sin; teaching us that being “perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48) is a mere ideal that cannot be reached by everyone; reassuring us that on a relative scale our sins are insignificant compared to others’. And in the moment we accede to the deceiver’s promptings, is it not as if Christ had turned the stones into bread? Yet, “man does not live on bread alone” (Mt. 4:4) but by persevering in the fast that is our Christian life on earth; a fast that places love for God above our own needs and desires, and follows unflinchingly his word which is “a lantern for my feet and a light for my path” (Ps. 119:105).
All of us fall at this first hurdle at some point in our lives. And now, with sufficient distance placed between us and God, the tempter urges us to place ourselves at the centre of our lives. It begins modestly: prayer, at first selfish requests, later bargaining, and ultimately demands, until our words echo his own, ‘If you are God, prove it.’ Here, faith evaporates, hope is replaced by ambition, and charity begins at home. Indeed, “you shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test” (Mt. 4:7), for we cannot desire death and revel in it and yet demand life. Those who challenge God to save them as they are, to forgive the unrepentant, to act against his very nature, will see, on the brink of eternity, that mercy does not defy justice, and that unconditional love is not just given but must be received with an openness of heart that returns it to its source, lest we be numbered among the many of which the Lord says, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, ...’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you doers of evil.’” (Mt. 7:22-23)
And now, when the god of self is enthroned, the tempter, now unabashed, reveals his hand. With God banished from the interior life, nothing remains to abate the self-aggrandisement, only the voice that prompts “more”, until more is never enough and he offers, “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and says ... ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’” (Mt. 4:9) So far separated, now, from the source of grace and love, how many will be able to come down from this high place of pride and contempt? Yet for he who says, “Away with you, Satan”, even at this late juncture, the merciful love of God will still prevail, for in the depth of the heart he never left, but waits in the desert for each soul to return.
So let it be, in the desert of my heart, that Christ is my stronghold against the wiles of Satan; that I may make the lifelong journey of these forty days, sober, vigilant, and so utterly in love with my God that no gilded deceptions will tempt me from his side.