Fr. Simon's Letter - February 19, 2023

We begin the season of Lent this Wednesday by marking ourselves with ashes. We set aside forty days to voluntarily give up some legitimate enjoyments so as to prepare for Easter. The forty days of Lent are rooted in certain biblical narratives that were a time of preparation for an encounter with the divine. Moses spent forty days and forty nights fasting as God wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant – the Ten Commandments. Elijah traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached the mountain of God. Jesus fasted and prayed in the desert for forty days and forty nights before he began his public ministry.

The richest image we have for Lent is the image of the desert, of Jesus going there voluntarily to fast and pray. He deprived himself of all the physical supports, including food, water, enjoyments and distractions, that protected him from his vulnerability, dependence and need to surrender in deeper trust to God. The desert, by taking away the securities and protections of ordinary life, strips us bare and leaves us naked, both before God and the devil. This brings us face-to-face with our own chaos. It is a place that correctly shapes our hearts to conform to God. 

The desert is also a place of purification. Men and women, looking to align themselves to God’s will and be purified, would often go off into some actual physical desert and stay there for a time. Jesus did this. After his baptism, he went off for “forty days” into the desert. 

It would be difficult for us in our day, with our busy lives to literally go to a different place on the map. However, in order to be filled by God, one must first be emptied. Before we are ready to fully and gratefully receive life, we have to first be readied by facing our own demons. This means going “into the desert,” namely, entering that place where we are most frightened, lonely and threatened. 

The desert does this to us. It empties us. Hence it is not a place wherein we can decide how we want to grow and change, but is a place where we undergo, expose ourselves to, and have the courage to face these changes. The idea is not so much that we do things there, but that things happen to us while there – silent, unseen, transforming things. The desert purifies us, almost against our will, through God’s efforts. In the desert, what really occurs is a confrontation between God and the devil that happens within and through us. Our job is only to have the courage to be there. The idea is that God does the work, providing we have the courage to show up.

In this season of Lent, let us enter the desert to courageously face the chaos and the demons within us and to let God do battle with them through us. The result is that we are purified and made ready, so that the intoxicating joy of Easter might then serve to bind us more closely to God and each other.

Just as in the past year, we will focus on the cross of Christ. There will be handheld crosses available in the church beginning Thursday, February 23, the day after Ash Wednesday. These crosses are from Jerusalem and are made of olive wood. We invite you to take one. They are small enough to be carried in your pocket or bag. Let this cross remind you of the sufferings of Christ. May it encourage you to carry your own daily cross with joy, and may it also motivate you to help lighten someone else’s burden by helping them carry their cross. 

Blessings!!