Last Wednesday we began this powerful season of Lent with the rite of the imposition of ashes, and this, along with the celebration of the Holy Mass ad orientem, with the priest facing the same direction as the faithful, expresses a fundamental aspect of these holy days. According to St. Augustine, if sin is a turning away from God to turn to creatures in a disordered way, conversion is precisely the opposite movement: turning to God and putting behind us everything that prevents us from union with the Lord. In this sense, we all have to leave behind something that hinders us in our dealings with the Lord, something that blocks a life of greater intimacy with Christ.
This conversio ad Deum, this "turning to God" is, in fact, an invitation to spiritual combat. It implies an effort that, well-oiled by the action of grace, should lead us to greater interior freedom in the service of the Lord. In the end, ours is a struggle for freedom. The enemy seeks to subdue our souls with the chains of sin, to dominate us under the yoke of our vices, to enslave us with the disordered attraction to the goods of this world. As we have heard in the Gospel, this is nothing new. Christ, the Head of his Body which is the Church, also underwent a similar trial. He too was tempted and his victory obtained for us the crown of triumph. United with him, we conquer even death itself.
The Judean desert of the Holy Land where Tradition recalls this event happening is certainly a mysterious place. There is something awe-inspiring in the silence and solitude of these rocks and clefts. Jesus withdraws there after his Baptism in the Jordan for face-to-face combat with the Tempter. It is really impressive to imagine the Lord sacrificing food for forty days and praying in caves to prepare himself for the new stage that was about to begin for him. In this account, the Son of God shows us the primacy of the spirit over the flesh, of virtue over vice, of grace over nature.
The evangelists stress the fact that Jesus was led there by the Spirit, and that the Spirit led him there to be tempted. This detail is also mysterious. Jesus knows where he is going and against whom he has to measure himself in the aridity of that inhospitable desert place.
It is necessary to grasp this perspective in order to understand our own spiritual life as well. Temptation is necessary for Christian progress and maturity. Fear of temptation never comes from God, nor is it healthy for us. In the same vein, it should be said that feeling temptation is not the same as consenting to it. There are many people who, when they experience the trial, when they see it coming, are filled with fear, or sadness, or pessimism, believing that they are at the gates of a great defeat. Perhaps that has been their history up to that moment, and they believe that they are condemned to repeat it again. Sin, when they feel the temptation, seems to them almost inevitable.
The reaction of Christ in today's Gospel, and of the saints who have imitated him perfectly, has been precisely the opposite. St. Ignatius of Loyola uses a very graphic expression in his Spiritual Exercises when he writes that in the face of the enemy we must "put on a lot of face". That is to say, we must stand up to him without flinching. The grace of God strengthens us, Christ has already defeated the devil and is at our side. We have the means to emerge victorious. What have we to fear?
This is how St. Teresa of Jesus, another giant of holiness, puts it:
"If this Lord is powerful, as I see He is, and know He is, and if the devils are His slaves (and of that there can be no doubt, for it is an article of the Faith), what harm can they do me, who am a servant of this Lord and King? How can I fail to have fortitude enough to fight against all hell?" So I took a cross in my hand and it really seemed that God was giving me courage: in a short time I found I was another person and I should not have been afraid to wrestle with devils, for with the aid of that cross I believed I could easily vanquish them all. "Come on, now, all of you," I said: "I am a servant of the Lord and I want to see what you can do to me." (The life of St. Teresa of Avila by Herself, Ch. 25:19)
Let us ask the Lord in this Holy Mass, that this Lent may help us to courageously wage Christian combat against the forces of evil and that we may find our strength in union with Christ. After our falls, may we may rise up in the Sacrament of Confession, and after these forty days in the desert of purification and penance, may we may emerge with Jesus and like Jesus into a new life in which we are always led by the Spirit to total union with our heavenly Father.
