Search
-
I like to think of the Spirit as the one who “makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters.” Yet I have come to see that the Spirit does indeed take part in the more challenging, often painful, events in life. To use the metaphor given to us in today’s Gospel, going through the desert is part of the spiritual journey.
The question is - how will I respond to the challenges of the desert? The temptation is to give into to the worldly values offered there. I can cave to the tendency to gratify my own immediate needs. I can seek power and glory for myself or the groups with which I identify. I can demand God show love by having my life go the way I want it to go. Or I can say No to seeking happiness in that manner, living by those values.
In Lent, we go into the desert as Jesus did to face our desires for security, for control, for esteem. While it is human (and therefore beloved by God) to want a certain amount of safety, power, affection in our lives, problems arise when such desires dominate us, when they strangle out our ability to live in mutually loving and nurturing relationships with others, creation, God. There are tendencies within us that must be faced and rejected in order for grace to flow into and through us.
In the glaring light of the desert, we begin to see the assumption and actions that are making us sick - as individuals, as Americans, as Catholics, as Creatures sharing this planet. When we turn away from the unhealthy, overbearing “devices and desires” within us and turn toward the Spirit, we walk out of the desert capable of new life.