Ash Wednesday

Into the Desert

In so many of the great figures of salvation history—Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, David, etc.—a period of testing or trial is required before they can commence their work. We see the same thing in the initiation rituals of primal peoples, and you can see it in Luke Skywalker’s initiation in Star Wars.

The goal of the Biblical initiation rituals is to convey this simple truth: your life is not about you. It is about God and God’s purposes for you.

This was the purpose of Jesus's forty-day sojourn in the desert, which we model during Lent. The desert represents a stripping away of our attachments, so as to make the fundamental things appear. In the desert, there are no distractions or diversions or secondary matters. Everything is basic, necessary, and simple. Either one survives or one doesn’t. One finds in the desert strengths and weaknesses he never knew he had.

So are you ready to visit your desert? Are you prepared to deal with your particular temptations to pleasure, power, money, and honor? Even if, in the past, you have not succeeded in the ways you wanted, remember that our God is a God of second chances. It’s never too late to start again.

On this Ash Wednesday, let's recommit ourselves and together journey into the desert.

Lent Day 2

Mustard Seeds

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, “the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants…so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade” (Matthew 13:31).

The first Christians understood Jesus to be speaking of his Church, the mystical body that began in the smallest way, but has come in time to be home to the nations of the world. The mustard seed of the Church began with a thirty-year-old man, dying on an instrument of torture, his disciples having fled, and his enemies mocking him. But it grew into the Body of Christ composed of billions of people in every country on the planet, and many more in heaven.

Watch this pattern repeated up and down the centuries. Francis of Assisi was something of a drifter, a young man who had repudiated the way of his father and was following the prompting of the Lord. Most people saw him as crazy, dangerous, and deranged. Soon, he attracted followers, and their number grew into the hundreds. The first Franciscan missionaries were stoned, chased away, or killed. But within a hundred years of Francis’s death, they were a world-wide organization—a mustard seed, indeed.

Mother Teresa left the relative comfort of her convent behind high walls in Calcutta and walked out into the streets of the worst slum in the world. Anyone seeing her with ordinary eyes would have written her off. But soon enough, she attracted followers who established her order in Calcutta, then around India, then in Venezuela, Rome, New York, London, and around the world. Another mustard seed.

This Lent, what mustard seed can you plant that might grow into a great tree where the birds of the air make their nests?

Lent Day 3

Freedom from Sin

The Church speaks the deepest truth about sin. It refuses to explain it away or make excuses for it or call it by another name. This is one reason for the Church’s deep unpopularity throughout the ages.

Do you remember that terrible story from the fall of 2006 in which a mad man made his way into an Amish school house in Pennsylvania and killed, in cold blood, five little girls and then himself? It would be hard to imagine a more heinous crime.

Yet, in the immediate wake of that terrible event, the families of the slain children went to visit the family of the man who had killed their little girls—and they pronounced their forgiveness of him. Their wounds, psychological and emotional, must have been as evident as the physical wounds on their kids.

And yet, they pronounced forgiveness. Mind you, it was not so much their own peace that they were offering; it was Christ’s peace, the peace beyond all understanding. But they were vehicles of it, the means by which it rushed into the world.

Can I suggest a reading of Christ’s words to the disciples that might be a tad surprising? “If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold them bound, they are held bound” (John 20:23). This does indeed have a juridical sense; Christ is indeed commissioning his priests to be the instruments of sacramental forgiveness.

But I think that there is a broader sense here as well, a sense in which these words apply to all Christians, priests and laity alike. Jesus is giving his Church the enormous privilege and responsibility of bearing the divine forgiveness to a fallen world.

And see how the words of the Lord apply precisely: if you (my followers) forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven; and if you don’t, they are still held bound by them.

The Church’s great mission is the pronouncement of the forgiveness of sins, the letting-free of a sin-bound world.

Have you accepted that mission?

Lent Day 4

Peter Maurin and Concrete

Acts of Love

Today I'd like to highlight one of the great Catholic figures of the twentieth century, Peter Maurin. He was born in May of 1877 in the south of France, one of 23 children—that's not a typo. He was educated by the Christian Brothers and, early on, became deeply inspired by the example of St. Francis.

In 1909, Maurin sailed for North America and for about twenty years lived a sort of radical Franciscan life, performing manual labor during the day, sleeping in any bed he could find, dining in skid-row beaneries. Any money he made, he spent on books or gave to those less fortunate.

During these years, Maurin was trying to develop a coherent Catholic social philosophy. The main problem with society, he felt, was that sociology, economics, and politics had all been divorced from the Gospel. The Gospel was a private concern of “religious” people and had no discernable effect on the way the political, social, and economic realms were run.

In a word, he thought that society had lost its transcendent purpose. Life had come to be organized around the drive for production and the search for profits, rather than around the real spiritual development of the person.

Maurin knew that the Church had an answer to this, and it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Maurin’s program was what he called “a personalist revolution,” which meant the building of a new world within the shell of the old, rather than waiting for social circumstances to change. The Christian should simply begin living according to a new set of values.

In 1932, Peter Maurin met a young woman in New York named Dorothy Day. For some years, Dorothy had been trying to find her path, a way of reconciling her new-found Catholic faith with her deep commitment to social action. With the arrival of Peter Maurin, she felt that her prayers had been answered.

He told her to start a newspaper which would present Catholic social teaching and provide for greater clarity of thought, and then to open “houses of hospitality” where the works of mercy could be concretely practiced. And this is precisely what she did. Together Day and Maurin founded the Catholic Worker Movement. They operated soup kitchens and bread lines for the poor, and invited homeless people to stay with them.

Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day remind us that we simply cannot love Christ without concretely loving those most in need. Love of Christ and love of neighbor coincide. Heaven and earth must come together.

Lent Day 5

Not on Bread Alone

The temptations Jesus faced in the desert may seem a little obscure to us, but, in fact, they lie at the heart of all human temptation. They are three classic substitutes for the good that is God’s will.

The first great temptation is to focus our lives on material things and the satisfaction of sensual desire: “The tempter approached him and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.’” Jesus is starving after 40 days of fasting, and he feels the temptation to use his divine power to satisfy his bodily desires.

This means that he feels the pull to make the satisfaction of bodily desire the center and ground of his life. This is the pull toward hedonism—the philosophy that the good life is the physically-satisfying life. Food, drink, sex, material things, money, comfort, or a secure sense of the future have become the supreme values for many in our culture.

Many, many people throughout history, and to this day, are waylaid by this powerful temptation. It is powerful because the desires are so basic. Thomas Merton said that the sensual desires—for food, comfort, pleasure, and sex—are like little children in that they are so immediate and so insistent.

But our lives will never open to greater depth as long as we are dominated by our physical desires. This is why in so many of the initiation rituals of primal peoples, something like fasting or sensible deprivation is essential. It is also why initiation into a demanding form of life, like the military, often involves the deprivation of sensual pleasures.

When we give way to this temptation, it shuts down the soul, for the soul has been wired for God. It was created for journey into the divine, for the beatific vision. When sensual desire dominates, those deeper and richer desires are never felt or followed. They are, as Merton said, like little children, constantly clamoring for attention.

This is why Jesus responds: “Scripture has it, ‘Not on bread alone shall man live” (Matthew 4:4). Life means so much more than sensual pleasure. Love, loyalty, relationship, family, moral excellence, aesthetic pleasure, and the aspiration after God are all so much more important.

Lent Day 6

The Allure of Power

Having failed at his first attempt to tempt Jesus in a direct and relatively crude way, the devil plays a subtler game: “The devil took him higher and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant” (Matthew 4:8).

This is the more refined temptation of power. Power is one of the greatest motivating factors in all of human history. Alexander the Great, Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Charlemagne, the Medicis, Charles V, Henry VIII, Louis XIV, and Napoleon—these are all people who have been seduced by the siren song of power.

We notice something very disquieting in the account of this temptation: the devil admits that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to him. He owns and controls them. That is quite a sweeping indictment of the institutions of political power. Isn’t it true that it seems extremely difficult for someone to attain high positions of power and not become corrupt?

It might be useful to recall here the two great names for the devil in the Bible: ho Satanas, which means “the adversary”, and ho diabolos, which means “the liar” or “the deceiver.” Worldly power is based upon accusation, division, and lies. It’s the way that earthly rulers have always done their business. A tremendous temptation for Jesus was to use his Messianic authority to gain worldly power, to become a king. But if he had given in to this, he would not have remained a conduit of the divine grace. He would be as remembered today as, perhaps, one of the governors of Syria or satraps of Babylon.

No, Jesus wanted to be the one through whom the divine love surged into creation, and so he said to Satan, “Scripture has it, ‘You shall do homage to the Lord your God; him alone shall you adore.’”

Lent Day 7

Always Be Ready

The first two temptations were straightforward enough: sensual pleasure and power. But this third one is more elusive. It is the temptation toward glory. It is the temptation to use God, to manipulate him instead of becoming his servant: “Then the devil led him to Jerusalem, set him on the parapet of the Temple, and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here…’”

What does the Temple have to do with glory? There was no place more central in Jewish society than the Temple, no place more revered. To stand therefore at the very pinnacle of the Temple is to stand highest in the eyes of the world. Everyone would be watching you, even God. As the devil says to Jesus, “He will bid his angels watch over you…with their hands they will support you, lest you stumble on a stone.”

This is the temptation to self-deification, one that all of us sinners are susceptible to. It's the temptation to make ourselves the center of the universe. But Jesus replies, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” God remains God, and you must become his servant.

Having dealt with these three classic temptations—sensual pleasure, power, and self-deification—Jesus is ready for his mission.

But the Gospel ends on an ominous note: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him for a time.” Notice the words “for a time.” This is warning to all of us that temptation will return throughout our lives, often at key moments.

Lent is a good time to remember that we must always be ready.

Lent Day 8

Resisting the Lordship of God

The past few days we have looked at the temptation of Jesus in the desert. All temptations have one thing in common: they entice us to resist the Lordship of God in our lives.

The first human temptation began with the Great Lie in the Garden of Eden, the lie that says we can live our best life outside the rules of God. It suggests that we need total autonomy to be happy. We know this temptation well.

Likewise, the three temptations Jesus faced in the desert are temptations we all face. They're not exactly the same, of course, but his temptations represent three classic ways that we resist the Lordship of God in our lives.

First, we place sensual pleasure at the center of our concerns. We make eating, drinking, and sex our dominant concerns. But this is a mistake, for only God can legitimately fill that central position. This is why Jesus must confront this temptation, feeling its full weight, and then resist it for us.

Next, we are tempted by power. From political dictators to tyrants within families and friendships, power is alluring. This is the temptation Jesus faces as he is brought to the highest mountain and offered all the kingdoms of the world. Once more, on our behalf, acting for us, Jesus resists this temptation.

Finally, we tend to place honor in that central position. We want a high reputation, we want to be seen by everyone, admired and thought highly of. This is the temptation Jesus faces when he is taken to the parapet of the Temple, the highest place in the society of his time, the place of supreme visibility. And, for the third time, Jesus confronts and resists this temptation for us.

Today, I ask you to reflect on where you are right now. What are you doing in the garden of your life? Who is luring you and how? Are you buying into the Big Lie?

Where are you in desert? How do you stand up to the three great temptations: to sensual pleasure, to honor, and to power?

Lent Day 9

Groaning in Labor

No one has to tell us that the world as we know it is a place of suffering, travail, and woe. Just watch the nightly news, or walk through a forest preserve or nature preserve and see the slaughterhouse of the animals. You'll see injustice, violence, and blood everywhere.

In light of that, let us take a look at Paul’s mysterious and wonderful letter to the Romans: “I consider that the sufferings of the present time are as nothing compared to the glory to be revealed for us. For creation was made subject to futility…in the hope that creation itself would be set free… We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now” (Romans 8:18-22).

These are wonderful and yet puzzling words. Paul gives us the magnificent image of groaning in labor. The gestation of a baby is a slow and often uncomfortable process, and the act of giving birth—especially in Biblical times—is often horribly painful.

So the world, in all of its travail and woe, is like a maternity ward where millions of mothers are laboring to give rise to life. Or the world, in all of its travail and woe, is like a garden that stands in constant need of pruning and hoeing and cutting.

Think of an old, gnarled tree whose beauty is largely due to the signs of its struggle with life, or the beauty of an old person’s face, which arises from the twists and turns and agonies of making it through the human journey. These are signs of suffering in the present life.

And yet all of this is in service of God’s deep purposes, even when we can’t clearly see them.

Lent Day 10

Rejoice in Our Suffering

St. Paul reflected often on suffering. In his letter to the Colossians, the apostle says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” (Colossians 1:24).

In his letters, Paul frequently attests to his great suffering. He was beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned many times, rejected by his own people, and he suffered under the weight of some ailment—physical or psychological, we don’t really know—for the whole of his life. Finally, of course, he was put to death. He was a man who knew about pain.

But here he tells us that he rejoices in his sufferings because, somehow, they are joined to the sufferings of Christ.

How do we understand this? Well, Christ saved us through an act of suffering. He died for us on the cross, bearing in his own person the weight of our sin. On the cross, suffering and love coincided. And when you think of it, every act of love involves suffering, since love always involves bearing the burden of another.

Now in Paul’s vision, the Church is not a society or a collectivity of like-minded people. Rather, it is a body, made up of interdependent cells, molecules, and organs. We don’t just follow Christ or admire him; we participate in him. Baptism involves just this dynamic of identification and participation.

Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised that we will be called upon to suffer. We have been given the privilege of carrying on Christ’s work in the world in just this way.

Charles Williams speaks of the principle of co-inherence as key to Catholicism. This is the idea that we are connected to one another much as the organs and systems of a living body are connected.

Thus, just as one system can take up the work of another, or one organ the burden of another that is ailing, so can one member of the body of Christ bear the burden of another.

In accord with Paul’s master idea, we can consciously offer our suffering—physical, spiritual, psychological—to Christ in order that he might use it, in his own mysterious manner, to benefit someone else. Christ allows us to minister through our pain.

Lent Day 11

Suffering and Salvation

There are times when the saving quality of our suffering is relatively easy to understand (even if it’s hard to bear). When a mother stays up all night, depriving herself of sleep, in order to care for a sick child, she is carrying his burden, suffering so that some of his suffering might be alleviated. When a person willingly bears an insult, and refuses to fight back or return insult for insult, he is suffering for the sake of love.

I’ll give you two more dramatic examples. First is Maximilian Kolbe. When a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz in the summer of 1942, the Nazi soldiers imposed their penalty. They took all of the prisoners from the escapees’ barracks and lined them up and then at random chose a man to be put to death in retaliation. When the man broke down in tears, protesting that he was the father of young children, a quiet bespectacled man stepped forward and said, “I am a Catholic priest; I have no family. I would like to die in this man’s place.”

Here, with brutal clarity, we can see the relationship between salvation and suffering willingly accepted. St. Maximilian Kolbe was consciously participating in the act of his Master, making up, in Paul’s language, what is still lacking in the suffering of Christ (Colossians 1:24).

And then there is St. Francis of Assisi, from whom Pope Francis took his name. Among the many stories told of St. Francis, one of the most affecting is that concerning his encounter with a leprous man.

Young Francis had a particular revulsion for leprosy. Whenever he saw someone suffering from that disease, he would run in the opposite direction. One day, he saw a leper approaching, and he sensed the familiar apprehension and disgust. But then he decided, under the inspiration of the Gospel, to embrace the man, kiss him, and give him alms. Filled with joy, Francis made his way up the road. When he turned around, he discovered the man gone, disappeared.

Once again, suffering was the concrete expression of love.

Lent Day 12

God on the Mountain

Today at Mass, we hear about the Transfiguration of Jesus, which was of great importance for the early Christians.

The Transfiguration takes place on a mountain, and this right away places it in relation to the Old Testament. Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son on a mountain; Noah’s ark comes to rest on Mt. Ararat; the law is given to Moses on Mt. Sinai; Elijah challenges the priests of Baal on Mt. Carmel; Jerusalem is built on the top of Mt. Zion.

Mountains are places of encounter with God.

In the New Testament, Jesus gives the law on a mountain: the Sermon on the Mount. He dies on Mt. Calvary. And, in a climactic moment in his public life, he brings three of his disciples to the top of a mountain—and there he is transfigured before them.

What is especially being stressed here is the manner in which Jesus represents the fulfillment of the Old Testament revelation, economically symbolized by the two figures with whom he converses: Moses, representing the law, and Elijah, representing the prophets.

When a Jew of Jesus’ time would speak of the Scriptures, he would use a shorthand: the Law and the Prophets. So in speaking to Moses and Elijah, in the glory of the Transfiguration, Jesus signals that he brings the law and the prophets to their proper fulfillment.

N.T. Wright, the great contemporary Biblical scholar, says that the Old Testament remained, fundamentally, a story without an ending, a promise without fulfillment…that is, until Jesus came into history.

Lent Day 13

What the Transfiguration Means

At the Transfiguration, Moses represented the law and Elijah represented the prophets. But why were Peter, James, and John present? And what does this event mean to us today?

St. Thomas Aquinas devotes an entire section in his Summa theologiae to the Transfiguration. His treatment offers some answers.

Aquinas says that it was fitting that Christ be manifested in his glory because those who are walking an arduous path need a clear sense of the goal of their journey. The arduous path is this life, with all of its attendant sufferings, failures, setbacks, disappointments, and injustices. And its goal is heavenly glory, which is fullness of life with God, the transformation of our bodies.

As Jesus makes his way toward the cross, he accordingly allows, for a brief time, his glory to shine through, the radiance of his divinity to appear. This event is meant to awaken our sense of wonder and affirm that we are not meant finally for this world.

Next, Aquinas asks about the “light” or the “glory” that envelops Christ during the Transfiguration, noting that it “shines.” Why have people, trans-historically and trans-culturally, associated holiness with light? Well, light is that by which we see, that which illumines and clarifies. But light is also beautiful, and beautiful things shine. Aquinas says that Jesus, at the Transfiguration, began to shine with the radiance of heaven so as to entrance us with the prospect of our own transfiguration.

Finally, Aquinas talks about the “witnesses” to the Transfiguration, namely Peter, James, John, Moses, and Elijah. Moses stands for the Law, and Jesus recapitulates, perfects, and illumines the Mosaic law: “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.” Christ is the new Moses, the new Lawgiver.

Similarly, Elijah stands for the prophets; he was the greatest of the prophets. The prophets spoke the words of God. And since Jesus is the Word of God, the prophetic books are read in his light.

So why is Peter there? Because, says Aquinas, he loved the Lord the most. Why is John there? Because the Lord loved him the most. Why is James there? Because he was the first of the Apostles to die for his faith. Who gets access to the glory of Jesus? Those who are tied to him through love

Lent Day 14

Where is Your Mountain?

As we continue our meditations, especially focusing on the Transfiguration, I would like to reflect on prayer. Studies show that prayer is a very common, popular activity. Even many people who profess no belief in God still pray!

But what precisely is prayer—or better, what ought it to be? The Transfiguration is extremely instructive. We hear that Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him “up the mountain to pray.” Now, as we’ve said before, mountains are standard Biblical places of encounter with God. The idea was that the higher you go, the closer you come to God.

We don’t have to be literal about this, but we should unpack its symbolic sense. In order to commune with God, you have to step out of your every day, workaday world. The mountain symbolizes transcendence, otherness, the realm of God. If people say, “I pray on the go” or “my work is my prayer,” they’re not really people of prayer.

Your mountain could be church, a special room in your house, the car, or a corner of the natural world. But it has to be someplace where you have stepped out of your ordinary business. And you have to take the time to do it. Jesus and his friends literally stepped away in order to pray.

The text then says, “While he was praying, his face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white” (Luke 9:29). The reference here is to Moses whose face was transfigured after he communed with God on Mt. Sinai. But the luminosity is meant in general to signal the invasion of God.

In the depths of prayer, when you have achieved a communion with the Lord, the light of God’s presence is kindled deep inside of you, at the very core of your existence. And then it begins to radiate out through the whole of your being. That’s why it is so important that Luke mentions the clothing of Jesus becoming dazzling white. Clothes evoke one’s contact with the outside world.

The God discovered in prayer should radiate out through you to the world, so that you become a source of illumination.

Lent Day 15

From Mountain to Mission

We’ve mentioned before how Moses and Elijah represent the Law and the Prophets, but there is more to their appearance at the Transfiguration than just a symbolic representation or shorthand for the Jewish Scriptures. They give us additional insights into the nature of prayer.

Recall that the text says, “Behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah…” When you pray, you step out of the ordinary world of space and time and enter into the properly eternal realm of God. This means that you can come into contact with the past and the future. You establish contact with what the Church calls “the communion of saints,” all those friends of God over the centuries. We speak of invoking the saints, speaking with them, seeking their help and intercession. This is not just pious talk. It is grounded in this metaphysics of eternity.

But what precisely are Jesus, Moses, and Elijah talking about? The answer is “…his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). We notice first of all the thematic connection between the Exodus that Moses led—a journey from slavery to freedom—and the exodus that Jesus would accomplish on the cross, a journey from sin and death to resurrection.

In both cases, it is a great work of liberation and life-giving love. This is key: the fruit of prayer in the Biblical tradition is action on behalf of the world. We are, essentially, a mission religion. Even the highest moments of mystical union are meant to conduce to doing God’s work in the world, to becoming a conduit of the divine grace. This is why Peter’s line is so important: “Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Luke 9:33).

As Luke points out immediately, “But he did not know what he was saying.” The point of prayer is not to stay on the mountain. It is not to cling to mystical experience, however wonderful. It is to become radiant with the divine light so as to share it with the world. And this is why the voice from the cloud, once it identified Jesus, specified, “Listen to him.”

Lent Day 16

Like a Flash of Lightning

One of the key visuals in the story of the Transfiguration is the divine light that radiates from Jesus. Matthew says, “His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” Luke reports, “His clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.” And Mark says, “His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them.”

This light seems to signal the beauty and radiance of a world beyond this one, a world rarely seen, and only occasionally glimpsed, amidst the griminess and ordinariness of this world.

Is this beautiful and radiant world ever seen today? Let me share a few stories with you. When I was traveling recently, I met a man who, as a young man, encountered St. Padre Pio, the famous stigmatist. He was privileged to serve his Mass. During the elevation of the host, after the consecration, this man noticed something remarkable: there was a glow around the holy man’s hands. Years later when he heard reports of “auras” he said to himself, “That’s what I saw that day.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, the English journalist and convert to Catholicism, was filming Mother Teresa for a documentary. One day, the electricity was out, and he bemoaned the fact that he had to film her without lights, convinced that the day would be lost. But when the film was developed, he noticed that the scenes were beautifully lit, and it appeared as though the light was coming from her.

And I know this might be a bit of a stretch, but there is scientific speculation that the marks on the shroud of Turin, the holy icon thought by many to be the burial shroud of Christ, were caused by a burst of radiant energy—light energy.

From the time of the earliest disciples, the holy followers of Jesus were pictured with halos above their heads. What is a halo if it is not the divine light breaking into our world today?

Lent Day 17

Mass and the Mountain

Yesterday we talked about the divine light as it appears through holy men and women. But is it possible for us ordinary people to see this light? I suggest that we do so every time we enter into the drama and beauty of the liturgy.

As Jesus appears in full glory, Peter, James, and John fall down in holy fear. This suggests an attitude of worship, the stance that all of us assume every time we approach the altar of God.

See also how the story paints an icon of the liturgy, both earthly and heavenly. At the center of it stands Jesus, the light of the world, the source of life. On either side of him stand Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the prophet). In the course of the liturgy, we read from the Old Testament, described in Jesus’ time in the shorthand of “the Law and the Prophets.”

Moses and Elijah also stand for the communion of saints, those who have been drawn into the heavenly life and who commune with Jesus. They are present at the liturgy, too, as we invoke them just before the Eucharistic prayer: “with the angels and the saints.”

There is also a “bright cloud” and from the cloud a voice declaring, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” The bright cloud signifies the Holy Spirit, and the voice is that of God the Father. This is a Trinitarian theophany—as at the Baptism of Jesus—and this theophany runs right through the liturgy from beginning to end.

After the vision, Peter, James, and John return to their day-to-day lives, coming back down the mountain. So, after we have glimpsed the light, we are told, “Go, the Mass is ended.”

Lent Day 18

God of the Nations

While we take comfort from much of the Bible’s message, the Bible is not always comforting news. It often carries a message of warning and danger. It’s good for us, during this Lenten season, to attend to the darker side of the Biblical message.

For example, when we read in the Old Testament about the pollution of the Lord’s Temple, it’s a familiar prophetic theme: the people have wandered from the ways of God, rendering impure what God intends to be just and upright. God sends prophet after prophet in order to bring his people back, but they are ignored, mocked, and rejected. Then God’s judgment falls on the unfaithful nation.

What is the instrument of God’s justice? One of the heathen nations, the Chaldeans, who come and destroy the city of Jerusalem, burn the Temple, carry off its most sacred objects, and lead the people into exile.

What is this? Dumb bad luck? Just the give and take of geo-political forces? No! The Bible insists that this should be read as God’s action—more specifically as God’s judgment and punishment. How at odds this is with the typically modern/Enlightenment view, according to which religion is a private matter, confined to the heart and the mind of the individual. For the Biblical authors, God is the Lord of history and time, and hence the Lord of nations and the Lord of nature. His works and actions must be discerned in all events.

Let me give you an example of such a boldly theological reading of political events. Karl Barth is considered one of the greatest Protestant theologians of the twentieth century. At the start of the First World War, he was a country pastor in Switzerland who had been trained in the confident liberal theology that was all the rage around the turn of the last century. This theology shared the common view that with the rise of the natural sciences, with the development of technology, and with political and cultural liberation, human beings could build the Kingdom of God here on earth.

From the quiet of his parsonage in Switzerland, Barth followed the horrors of the First World War, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, the devastation of nations, the collapse of the European social order. Then something dawned on him: the conviction that it was precisely the inflated self-regard and hubris of nineteenth century liberalism that led to this disaster!

He saw the European powers as descendants of the builders of the Tower of Babel, attempting to reach up to God on their own terms and in their own way. Behind the sunny confidence of the liberal period, he discerned arrogance, imperialism, and colonialism. The advances of science were made possible through the rape of the environment and economic comfort for some was made possible through the enslavement of others. In all of this, he read current events in light of God's great plan.

As difficult as that sometimes is to do, it's how we're to read our lives as well

Lent Day 19

Lazarus, Come Out!

Jesus raises three people from the dead in the Gospel stories: the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Naim, and Lazarus. In the symbolic language of the Gospels, these physical resuscitations are evocative of spiritual raisings from sin to spiritual health.

St. Augustine says that the young girl, who dies inside her house, symbolizes the sin that takes place in our thoughts and our hearts but that has not yet borne fruit in action. The son of the widow of Naim, carried to the gate of the house, represents sin that has expressed itself concretely in action. This dead man is raised and given back to his mother, who stands for the Church.

Thirdly, and most drastically, we have the case of Lazarus. He stands for the worst kind of moral/spiritual corruption: sin that has been expressed in the world and become embedded in evil custom and habit. This is the rot that has really set in, producing a spiritual stink.

In the Gospel of John, the raising of Lazarus takes place just before the Passion, just before the climactic moment when Jesus defeats death by succumbing to it. When told that Lazarus has died, Jesus says, “Our beloved Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him” (John 11:11). With these words, he signifies we are in a new world. Within the confines of the old world, the old consciousness, death is ultimate, and its very finality gives it its power, but referring to it as “sleep,” Jesus is signaling that through God’s power and according to God’s purpose, death is not ultimate; it is not the final word.

“When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days” (John 11:17). This is to signal that there is no mistake; the man is truly and definitively dead. But this is no concern for the one who transcends both space and time, whose power stretches beyond life and death as we know them.

Martha comes out to meet him and indicates her incipient belief in his identity and power: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother never would have died. Even now, I am sure that God will give you whatever you ask him.” Jesus replies, “Your brother will rise again…I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:21-25). God hates death and doesn’t want its phony finality to ruin human life.

Coming to Lazarus’s tomb, Jesus feels the deepest emotions and begins to weep. This is God entering into the darkness and confusion and agony of the death of sinners. He doesn’t blithely stand above our situation, but rather takes it on and feels it.

But then, like a warrior, he approaches the enemy. “Take away the stone,” he directs. Those who are stuck within the confines of this world protest, “Lord, surely there will be a stench.” They are saying, “Don’t mess with death; you can’t reverse it. Its power is final.”

Jesus is undaunted. He commands, “Lazarus, come out!” This is the voice, not simply of a hopeful human being, not simply of a great religious figure; this is the voice of God who hates death and has dominion over it. And therefore “The dead man came out.”

Jesus finally says, “Untie him and let him go free.” Just as he freed Lazarus, so Jesus liberates us from our thralldom to death.

Lent Day 20

Calling Us Out of the Tomb

Let's reflect a bit more on Jesus' encounter with Lazarus. At the tomb of Lazarus, Jesus “groaned in spirit.” Jesus’ trouble here is the result of his identification with sinful humanity. He goes all the way to the bottom of it, letting its truth affect him. Jesus does not just love us abstractly or from a distance; no, he comes close to us. More to the point, this groaning of Jesus signals the pain that God feels at our imprisonment. If his glory is our being fully alive, his agony is our sin. How salvific it can be to listen to this groaning of the Lord at our own lack of life.

In the same vein, Jesus weeps for his friend. There is something heartbreaking about this for it is the only time in the Scripture that Jesus is described as weeping. Whatever form death takes in us—physical, psychological, spiritual—it is something deeply troubling to God.

One detail is particularly moving: Jesus asks, “Where have you laid him?” Sin alienates us from our God, making us strangers to him. Just as God in the book of Genesis looked for Adam and Eve who were hiding from him, so here God incarnate doesn’t know where his friend Lazarus is.

Then the Lord comes to the tomb. We hear that it was a cave with a stone laid across it. When things are dead, we bury them away, we hide them. When we feel spiritually dead, we lock ourselves up in the darkness of our own anxiety and egotism and fear. But there is a power, a divine power, sent into this world whose very purpose is to break through all such stones.

“Lazarus, come out!” Are there any words more beautiful and stirring in the whole New Testament? From whatever grave we are lying in, Jesus calls us out.

Lent Day 21

Something from Nothing

The God of the Bible creates ex nihilo, from nothing, and this is incomparably good news. It applies not only to creation in the grand metaphysical sense but creation in a spiritual and physical sense as well.

The story of Elijah and the widow of Zarapheth demonstrates this. It was a time of drought in Israel, and Elijah is desperate. So Yahweh gives him instruction and invites him to trust. But the Lord sends the prophet to about the least likely place of succor: to a widow in a town outside of Israel’s borders.

Widows were practically helpless at this time, and indeed when Elijah asks her for something to eat, she says that she only has enough for one more meal for herself and her son. But then comes a mutual act of faith. Elijah trusts that God must have sent him to the right place, for he asks for her to make him a cake. And she trusts in him and does what he asks. What happens? The flour and oil do not run out for a year.

Both the prophet and the widow were in dire straits and both found what they needed. But the story goes on. Elijah stays with the widow and her son, and the son becomes deathly ill and finally dies. The widow—already bereft of her husband and now without any means of support, emotional or financial—despairs and lashes out at the prophet.

But once again, as she is striking bottom, the prophet asks her to trust: “Give me your son,” he says. Elijah takes the young man upstairs and cries aloud to God. Then stretching himself three times on the child’s body, he supplicates the Lord again. And the young man came back to life!

An absolutely hopeless situation became a place of hope. Not only did the young man come back to life, but the widow regained her faith.

If you feel hopeless or despairing this Lent, remember that God can bring something from nothing.

Lent Day 22

The Gaze of God

What is it about a face? When we meet someone, we study that person’s face. The face gives away the soul. We can read so much in a person’s facial expression. So much of the texture of what she’s thinking, feeling, and experiencing can be sensed in the face. When we want to be honest and direct, we look someone in the face. When we resolve to meet a difficult situation, we face up to it.

On other hand, standing before the face of another can be threatening and shaming, but also sometimes enlivening.

In the book of Numbers, the Lord instructs Moses how he wants the priests to bless the people: “Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: this is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them: The Lord bless you and keep you! The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you! The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace” (Numbers 6:23-26).

This is all about the face of Yahweh. We often speak about man's search for God. But the thrust here is in a different direction. It is much more interested in God’s quest for us. God looks upon us with love and searches us out when we run from him.

Think of Psalm 139 in this context: “Lord, you search me and you know me; you know my resting and my rising; you discern my purpose from afar. Before ever a word is on my lips, you know it, O Lord, through and through…”

Many of us are, despite ourselves, deists. That is, we think of God—if we think of him at all—as a distant force, a creative power indifferent to the world.

But that just isn’t biblical religion. God knows us, loves us, searches us out, and makes his face to shine upon us, looking upon us kindly.

Think of the experience of being gazed upon by someone who loves you and whom you love. In that gaze—penetrating, knowing, benign—you find, not oppression, but joy and peace. That's how God looks upon you

Lent Day 23

Beasts of the Earth

During Lent, we may spend time doing battle with what we call our “animal passions.” But this may not be the right way to put it because God’s covenant is made, not just with men and women, but with the animals as well.

I know this sounds strange to us, but that is because we are the heirs of modernity, a philosophical movement that tends to separate human beings radically from other animals and from nature. Modernity sees nature as, at best, something that might serve us or be mastered by us. But God has a much more integrated vision of things. All creatures, coming forth from God, are ontological siblings—brothers and sisters. In finding oneness with God, we find, ipso facto, oneness with the rest of creation.

This idea is reflected in much of the great tradition prior to modernity. St. Thomas Aquinas says that vegetables, plants, and animals are ensouled like us. In fact, the word “animal” just means “thing with an anima, a soul.” Thomas Aquinas saw us as part of a great chain or hierarchy of being. For the modern consciousness, we are, essentially, the masters of nature, and this is part of the problem for us, of course. We have so mastered nature that we are, effectively, alienated from it.

The Bible would have named this as one of the faces of sin. Sin, the caving in on oneself prompted by fear and pride, effectively cuts us off from each other, but it also cuts us off from the non-human world around us. It cuts us off from our love for it, our curiosity about it, our care for it, and our fascination with it. (This was one of the major themes in Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si'.)

But Jesus, in his own person, joins together the disparate elements of creation, the spiritual and the material, angels and wild beasts.

Lent Day 24

Animals and Angels

Medieval scholars said that the human being was a kind of microcosm, since he bore within himself the spiritual and the physical. Through his body, man reached down to the lower elements and was one with the animals and minerals, but through his mind, he reached upwards to God and the angels.

We know instinctively how right this is. On the one hand, we can explore the intricacies of mathematics and geometry. We can soar with Mozart and Shakespeare. We can design high-level computers and machines that can move through the galaxy. We can enter into the depth and silence of prayer, becoming as much like the angels as possible. In so many ways, we strain upward to our home among the spirits.

On the other hand, we are, like it or not, animals. We need food and drink. We get too hot and too cold. We experience instincts and emotions that often get the better of us. We revel in the sheer pleasure of the senses and the thrill of being touched. We love to run, to exercise our muscles. We exult in the rough and tumble of very physical competition and play.

This is our glory—in a sense we combine the best of both worlds—but it is also our agony. It is the source of much of our sadness and conflict for it entails that we are a hybrid, a half-breed, something of a metaphysical mongrel. We bring together two qualities that are at odds with each other. The spirit strains against the body, and the body strains against the spirit. Sometimes the spirit commands and the body refuses to obey; sometimes the body makes demands that the spirit cannot or will not accommodate. This tension is one of the faces of sin. It is the result of the dislocation between ourselves and God.

The harmony of spiritual and physical seems to be what God savors and intends: the spirit commanding the body, but the body also informing the spirit. There is a proper hierarchy between them, but it must never become a tyranny. The demands and goods of the body must always be respected, and must even, to some degree, shape the life of the spirit. We were made as embodied spirits, or if you prefer, as spiritualized bodies. And we will be saved as spirit-body composites.

Lent Day 27

Sheer and Shocking Grace

In his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul tells the community his own story and how he came to Christian faith. It didn’t happen through study or through someone else's tutoring. It came as a sheer and shocking grace to the most unlikely of people.

“You heard of my former way of life in Judaism,” he says with almost comical laconicism. Paul’s conversion story must have been well-known at the time. “How I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.”

Let those words sink in. Paul wasn’t just opposed to Christianity; he didn’t simply argue against it or ignore it. He actively, brutally, and violently persecuted it.

The Acts of the Apostles speaks of Paul “breathing murderous threats” and seeking to bring Christians back in chains. He was, in a word, about as far from Christian faith as you could get. He was spiritually dead.

Yet Christ brought him back to life: “When God, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me…” (Galatians 1:15).

God fashioned Paul’s Christian faith from nothing, and here’s the application for all of us: don’t give up hope, even when you are in desperate straits. Don’t surrender, even when things seem utterly void of meaning and hope.

You may be on your last legs; you may have nothing left in the tank; you may be moving in the wrong direction.

But don’t give up! God’s grace can bring you back and renew your life again.

Lent Day 28

The Gift of Healing

Jesus was a healer: he cured the lame, the blind, and the deaf. He raised the dead to life. And healing, accordingly, has been associated with his followers from their very beginning. The Acts of the Apostles is filled with accounts of healing miracles via the earliest evangelists.

Up and down the centuries saints and holy people have been described as miraculous healers. For example, see Bernadette of Lourdes, who uncovered a spring which, for the last century and a half, has been a source of healing for the world. Even to the present day we have healers in our churches.

Why has this gift been given to the Church? Undoubtedly so as to carry on the work of Christ and to help with evangelization.

Do many people have it? Obviously not, although some people in the church do indeed have the gift of physical healing. It is, as Paul indicates, a sign gift; its purpose is to signal in a remarkable way the mysterious power of God. Count me suspicious of those who go on television with this supposed capacity, but count me deeply appreciative of those dedicated souls who do genuinely have this charism of physical healing.

Does it mean that Catholics ought to eschew ordinary medicine and seek this kind of healing? Obviously not. God loves to work through secondary causes like doctors, medicines, and nurses. Ought we to rely on this gift in a presumptuous way? No, but sometimes it is called for.

Faith, prayer, and an acceptance of God’s will are necessary for this gift. But it can be blocked. What can prevent it? Perhaps an enlightened rationalism that simply rules it out of court—an excessive, unhealthy skepticism.

But perhaps this gift is given more broadly if we construe it along psychological and spiritual lines.

Are you the kind of person who heals others, who brings calm and peace, who soothes troubled psyches and spirits? If so, how generously are you putting this gift to the service of others?

Lent Day 29

Shift Your Perspective

There is a shift in consciousness that is essential to religion. It is the shift—conversion if you will—from a world-centered perspective to a God-centered perspective. It involves a letting-go of passing things in this world and resolutely clinging to God alone.

That means even letting go of relationships—even the best and most intense. Mind you, I don't mean this in the literal sense, but, if I can put it this way, in the attitudinal sense, “as if” they were not all defining.

St. Paul tells us that we are not to make the things of this world all important. We are not to be sad or happy but we are to understand that worldly happiness or unhappiness ultimately doesn’t matter.

St. Paul was so overwhelmed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that everything in this world was relativized. God’s love and purpose and existence—made eminently clear in the Resurrection—caused this world to fade into relative insignificance.

This is the apatheia urged by the Greek fathers and the indifferencia of Ignatius of Loyola: “Whether I have a long life or a short life; whether I am healthy or ill; whether I am wealthy or impoverished—it doesn’t matter, as long as I am serving the Lord.”

Instead of seeing money, success, fame, power, and pleasure as ultimate goods, see them as nothing compared to the grace of God. Instead of living as though worldly success were ultimate, live as though the things of this world don’t matter at all. In a word, change your mind, and see things from the perspective of God.

Lent Day 30

Beyond the Mind You Have

Jesus begins his ministry by saying, “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Good News!” (Mark 1:15).

A new order has broken in—that’s what the reign of God means. Something new has emerged in Jesus himself and it amounts to a new way of ordering things.

Now what do we have to do?

Metanoiete, says Jesus. What the word means literally is “go beyond the mind that you have.” See things in a new way; think about the world differently.

Immediately after giving this speech, Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John, and they leave everything behind: livelihood, family, worldly hopes, whatever ambitions they had—and they follow him.

This is the freedom that comes from conversion, from the attitude of detachment. They are no longer tied down—wrapped up, as it were, in their nets. Now they are free to follow the promptings of the Lord.

What does this mean for us today? The same thing it meant for the first followers of Christ. Go beyond the mind that you have. Repent. Live as though nothing in this world finally matters.

When you do this you will be living in the kingdom of God!

Lent Day 31

Encountering the Holy God

Isaiah’s prophetic call, the moment when he encountered God and realized his mission and vocation, is a story for all of us.

Isaiah tells us that he was in the Temple and suddenly saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the Temple with seraphim stationed above.

Isaiah sees the Lord, but he doesn’t in any way describe him. God is always known as someone unknown, comprehended as someone incomprehensible. He shows himself, but doesn’t allow himself to be totally seen. The revelation of God is always, at the same time, the veiling of God.

Isaiah goes on to say that the door shook and the house was filled with smoke. An experience of God always shakes us, upsets us, and turns things around. We are driven out of our complacency, our ordinary ways of seeing and acting.

Then comes the inevitable confrontation with one’s own imperfection: “Then I said, ‘Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips’” (Isaiah 6:5).

The closer we get to God, the more aware we become of our imperfections. We are always humbled in the presence of God, convicted of our sin, shaken and turned around. We are, in one sense, less confident, less cocky, less sure of ourselves. But this is all good, for the “self” that we lose is the false self, the sinful “I.”

One of the seraphim then flew to Isaiah and touched his mouth with a burning ember. God is never interested in convicting us of our sin and leaving us hanging. His purity makes us pure, if we allow him to burn away our sin. Something in you needs to be annihilated. And God’s awe-ful holiness lets you know what that is.

Lent Day 32

Climbing Into Your Boat

Simon was an ordinary fisherman from Capernaum in Galilee. One day, he was going about his ordinary business, washing his nets and preparing for a catch. Without warning, without asking permission, Jesus got into his boat. Now the boat was everything for Peter; it was his livelihood, his security. And Jesus just got in and began giving orders.

So it goes in the order of grace. The true God cannot be manipulate by us, controlled through our efforts. Rather, he comes into our lives, often unbidden and unexpected, to determine and guide us.

What does this surprising and awe-inspiring person do once he gets our attention? He gives us a mission. When Jesus gets into Simon’s boat, he says, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” The deep water represents God’s work, projects, and intentions.

Jesus even clarified this mission for Peter saying, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men” (Luke 5:10). In essence, he told Peter: Now you know what your life is about; now the depth dimension has opened up.

But what does all of this also produce? A keen sense of one’s own sinfulness. It is a Biblical commonplace (on display in the lives of all the saints as well) that the closer God gets, the more one becomes aware of his sin. But once God reveals himself, once he gets into our boat, we can no longer live with those comforting illusions.

Peter says, “Leave me Lord, I’m a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). This is precisely why we recite or sing the Kyrie at the beginning of every Mass. In God’s presence, we become aware of our sin. We must not be afraid of acknowledging our sin—despite a thousand suggestions to the contrary coming from the culture. God can easily deal with sin that is honestly confessed.

Our God is not the least bit interested in getting us fussily preoccupied with our sin. He wants us to confess it and get on with the mission.

Has God broken into your life? Has he given you a mission? Has he forgiven your sins? The answer to all three questions is: “Yes!”

Lent Day 33

The Scapegoat

I recently mourned the death of French philosopher René Girard, whose insights on group psychology and the scapegoating mechanism were very influential in my life. He says that a kind of community is formed precisely when a variety of people, who would otherwise rather dislike one another, come together in a common hatred of someone else.

We can see this, Girard tells us, at all levels, from the most personal to the most collective, from families to nation-states. How often there is a “black sheep” in a family? He or she plays an important role in family stability and identity.

What is the only thing that two scholars can agree on? How poor the work of a third scholar is! Likewise, what is the only thing two musicians can agree upon? How awful another musician’s composition is.

This dynamic is in effect in one of the most beautifully crafted stories in the New Testament: the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11), which we hear today at Mass. The text tells us “They caught her in the very act of adultery.”

The first thing we wonder is, where were they situated in order to catch her in the very act? The voyeurism and perversion of these men is shocking.

Then they come en masse, in the terrible enthusiasm of a mob, and they present the case to Jesus.

Now what does Jesus do in the face of this violent mob that is seeking release from its tension? First, he bends down and writes on the ground. Sometimes silence, a refusal to co-operate is the best opening move. But the mysterious writing might indicate something else: the writing down of the sins of each person in the group, as some of the Church Fathers surmised.

Then Jesus says “let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.” He forces them to turn their accusing glance inward, where it belongs. Instead of projecting their violence outward on a scapegoat, they should honestly name and confront the dysfunction within them. This story, like all the stories in the Gospels, is a foreshadowing of the great story toward which we are tending. Jesus will be put to death by a mob bent on scapegoating violence. Yet in sacrificing himself, he will ultimately absorb the violence and defuse it.

Lent Day 34

The God of Mercy

God is much more interested in your future than in your past. Why worry excessively about what came before? Why obsess over your past sins? We have a God who “makes all things new,” and in that we find hope.

It is a sad commentary indeed, but very often it's religious people who most want to trap others in their past, nail them to the cross of the mistakes they have made, and use religion itself as the means to affect this punishment. This is as true today as it was in the time of Christ when the mob brought the woman caught in adultery before him.

In one of the great one-liners of the entire Bible, which we heard yesterday at Mass, Jesus disarms them: “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). Our solidarity in sin ought to awaken in us a greater compassion for one another. At this prompting, they drifted away, one by one, until Jesus was left alone with the woman.

Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on do not sin anymore” (John 8:11). How rich is that little word “go.” Again, what is being emphasized is the future not the past, on what lies ahead instead of obsessing with what lies behind.

Do you feel terribly imprisoned by your past? Perhaps you’ve done something terrible, something awful and shameful and every time you think of it, you cringe. Or maybe someone has harmed you so severely that you just can’t let go of the hurt and you continue to seethe with resentment. Perhaps you feel that you’ve done something so wrong that not even God can forgive you. You don’t even bother going to confession because you’re just too ashamed or so convinced that God wouldn’t forgive you.

What I want you to know right here and right now is that there is a way out, a way forward, a path opening up in the desert.

You might be miseria (in misery) but standing right in front of you is Misericordia (mercy). So, go.

Lent Day 35

Into the Desert

The Biblical authors knew all about the desert, for they were desert people.

How often the great heroes of the Biblical revelation have to spend time in the desert: Abraham has to cross it to get to the promised land; Moses and the Israelite people have to go through it to get home; Joseph is sent into Egypt and prison before he is ready for his mission; John the Baptist is a voice crying in the desert; Paul goes into the desert of Arabia after receiving the revelation on the road to Damascus. Even Jesus himself spends forty days and nights in the desert before commencing his ministry.

What does the desert symbolize? A number of things: confrontation with one’s own sin, seeing one’s dark side; a deep realization of one’s dependency upon God; an ordering of the priorities of one’s life; a simplification, a getting back to basics. It means any and all of these things.

But the bottom line is that all of them had to wait through a painful time, living a stripped down life, before they were ready for mission. They were compelled to wait, during a time and in a place where very little life seems to be on offer.

But it is precisely in such deserts that the flowers bloom. Moses becomes a great leader; Abraham is the father of many nations; Joseph becomes the savior of his people; John the Baptist is the forerunner of the Messiah; Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles. And of course, Jesus becomes our Savior.

This Lent, perhaps God is calling you into the desert—not to punish you, but to prepare you.

Lent Day 36

Flowering in the Desert

People who live in the desert speak of the flowering of the desert that takes place practically overnight.

Often we are forced to go through desert times where there doesn’t seem to be any possibility of flowering. Religiously intentional people will do so purposely and consciously, but most people are drawn through it quite against their will.

I knew a woman who endured a terrible depression. Depression is something of an epidemic in our country. There are all sorts of reasons for it: physiological, psychological, experiential, spiritual—but however it is produced, it is awful.

This woman was in that sort of state for an extended period of time. She came to see me and asked what it could possibly mean. I encouraged her to read the great desert texts of the Bible, especially Isaiah, that tell us flowers bloom precisely in the desert.

In time, and after much study, she became a therapist and now helps to guide others through their deserts.

The apostle James also talks about waiting for new life to spring forth: “Be patient, my brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer awaits the precious yield of the soil. He looks forward to it patiently while the soil receives the winter and the spring rains” (James 5:7).

There is so much packed into that image. The farmer watches the plants and crops grow, but he doesn’t fully grasp how this happens. The gestation takes place silently and in secret, below the ground. There is a time when a beautiful plant, exultant in the sun, is nothing more than a seed, buried under a foot of earth. There’s nothing beautiful about it, nothing impressive when it is buried in the earth.

So too are we during our desert periods.

What is the worst thing that a farmer could do? Pick at the plant impatiently, trying to hurry its growth. It takes just as much time as it takes. And what else is required? Winter and spring rains. What is more obnoxious, more disagreeable than winter rain? But without it, there will be no growth.

So the depressions, setbacks, failures, sufferings of our lives are like winter rains.

Do we trust in the work of the divine cultivator?