LENT AND DESERT SPIRITUALITY

LENT AND DESERT SPIRITUALITY

Lent and the spirituality of the desert have striking parallels. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, where the ashes made from blessing the previous year’s palm branches are placed on the heads of the believers with the accompanying words “Repent and believe the Gospel” or “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words highlight the utter weakness of humanity (nothingness) and the obligatory fasting provides hunger pangs that cause us to physically experience that weakness.

During Lent, in both fasting and giving up certain things, we imitate the sacrifice and temptation of Christ in the desert for 40 days. Yes, like the reading of the Desert Fathers, Lent is a journey into the desert, but the desert isn’t so much a place as a geography of the human heart.

The desert is an accurate physical representation of the human person without the grace of God: nothingness, desolation. “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Without the grace of God we have neither our physical existence that begins at conception nor our spiritual existence through the regeneration of Baptism and the forgiveness of sins. These are like two Big Bangs that precipitated two creations ex nihilo.

With Lent we begin at the beginning: our own nothingness is a wonderful lens through which to view life. Seeing our existence through such a prism cultivates gratitude because we realize that all we have, whether natural gifts (beauty, intelligence, certain aptitudes) or virtues born of the Spirit (prudence, temperance, fortitude), are from the hand of God.

It also cultivates humility because we know that our business acumen, mechanical inclination, fortitude, or prudence, are all gifts of God. Pride is the act of taking these back for ourselves, in acting as if we did it all ourselves.

An excellent question a person may ask is, “Don’t we play a role in the process in cooperating with the grace of God?” The answer is yes, and yet, even the ability to avail ourselves to the grace of God is rooted in grace.

This is why the Desert Fathers are so opposed to judging their neighbor. Abba Moses said, “A monk must die to his neighbor and never judge him at all, in any way whatever.”

This does not mean a person cannot judge a particular behavior as sinful (e.g., adultery, coveting, bearing false witness), but he cannot then take the common next step of looking down in self-righteousness on his neighbor. The fathers regarded this arrogance as committing a worse sin than the one committed by the person we are judging. This humility is rooted in the revelation that without the grace of God, every one of us would be walking advertisements for the full-flowering of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The desert as a geography of the human heart, in all its simplicity and stripped-down desolation, reminds us of the importance of removing all that is superfluous and extraneous from our lives. Benedicta Ward writes about the Desert Fathers: “…it was a radically simple life: a stone hut with a roof of branches, a reed mat for a bed, a sheep-skin, a lamp, a vessel for water or oil.”

Food and sleep were reduced to a minimum. It calls to mind the quote from Marcus Aurelius: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

Lent is an excellent time to eradicate the superfluous. You don’t need to upgrade to a new home when the one you have now meets all your needs or pursue the promotion at work when you know that higher pay and more prestige will have the deleterious tradeoff of substantially less time for marriage and family.

Sometimes we have extraneous activities that need to be streamlined. Many mothers and fathers become “Taxi Mom” and “Taxi Dad” in running their kids to multitudinous extracurricular activities, some of which are not necessary. Some practicing Catholics overlook the fact that you can be overcommitted to church activities to the point of negatively affecting important relationships.

The Fathers were also dedicated to eliminating superfluous words in their relationships. Abba Agathon lived for three years with a stone in his mouth with the goal of learning to keep silence.

St. John of the Cross believed that silence was God’s first language and the Holy Writ is replete with such citations as Proverbs 10:19: “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.”

Who hasn’t had conversations that went on too long and deflated the human spirit or holy moments that were diminished by the tsunami of noise and chatter? Cardinal Robert Sarah has written wisely about such issues in his recent book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise.

During Lent, in imitating Christ’s temptation in the wilderness, we imitate his relationship to the superfluous. He was silent because words were not necessary. He did not need to turn stones to bread because he lived by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God. He didn’t need the kingdoms of this world because he already was the King of Kings.

He didn’t need to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple and have his angels save him to prove that he was the Son of God because he was already secure in his divinity. May God grant us all the discernment during Lent to distinguish the difference between the superfluous and the necessary.