I think we all know that, technically and chronologically, Lent always begins on Ash Wednesday; this year, for example, a few days ago, on March 5. But thematically, and in the big picture of what Lent is meant to be all about, you could say that Lent began a moment ago, in the proclamation of today’s Gospel.
How did Lent get its duration of roughly 40 days? From this Gospel we just heard.
How did Lent become a season of self-denial, testing and purification? From this same Gospel.
So for those of us who haven’t gotten off to the greatest start since Ash Wednesday, guess what, you can have a new beginning right now!
Let’s break down this very important Gospel, so important that it’s featured in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark along with Luke. What we have here are four main elements: Jesus, the desert, the presence of the Holy Spirit, and Satan. Or, stepping back even more, we have an individual, a vastness, the presence of God, and the possibility of diabolic disruption.
Jesus is so grounded in who he is, and whose he is, that he really doesn’t engage in the three temptations of Satan. He fires back Scripture citations and shuts down each offer by Satan, one by one.
We can apply this scenario as a motif for all of our life, or for individual parts. For example, let’s look at time we set aside for personal prayer. There’s us as individuals, there’s the vastness of the time we hope to fill with prayer, there’s the presence of God with us, and there’s the possibility of being tempted to get distracted. If we’re grounded in who we are, we keep moving forward at the first sign of temptation.
Earlier this weekend, I returned from a gathering of about 200 people at the Garrison Institute in New York, along the Hudson River across from West Point. The theme of the gathering was contemplative living, and there were Catholic priests, Buddhist monks, Benedictine monks, Protestant clergy and all sorts of leaders in contemplation in the United States. I felt like asking for autographs because I read so many of the presenters’ books or attended their lectures.
Anyhow, as you might expect, we began our session with a period of meditation. As I was settling in to the prayer, with my eyes still open, I observed how still and silent the room had gotten – 200 people just absolutely locked into this collective prayer. And observing that became the prayer for me. So, in light of our Gospel today, it shows me that there is a collective version of the desert experience that is available to us, as well. Together, we can face vastness and temptation with our grounding in God’s presence. This is how peace and justice is achieved in society.
Let’s apply the good news of this Gospel for the rest of this Mass today, in the hope that it will carry much further: aware of God’s presence in word and sacrament, aware of the vastness of the liturgy, and aware of the temptation to daydream, get distracted or otherwise tune out, let us remain focused on who we are and whose we are in God, giving ourselves over to God so that we can most fully participate in this worship.