Lent is a God-ordained time to do away with illusions and to embrace reality. In order that we do so, we are encouraged to emulate in a spiritual manner the example of Christ who fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. In Scripture, the wilderness is pictured both a place of danger and a place of promise.  Away from people, from social conventions, and away from the distractions of work and play, the conflict between good and evil becomes more open and apparent.

In the wilderness one is vulnerable to attack from demons within and devils without. Yet, because it is a place of human absence and weakness, the wilderness is the place were God speaks more clearly and where spiritual nourishment is both more satisfying and more fruitful. The disciplines associated with Lent are meant to create a spiritual type of wilderness where we may both vanquish temptation and grow in spiritual strength and maturity.

And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Why did the same Jesus who turned water into wine refuse to turn stones into bread? Seeing the difference between the miracles which Christ performed and the temptation which He refused amounts to seeing

the difference been the revelation of the kingdom of God, on the one hand, and magic, on the other. The Son of God multiplied loaves and fishes miraculously to feed the thousands in the wilderness, because He is the bread of life.

Doing the devil’s bidding would have obscured rather than illuminated the nature of the kingdom of heaven. That is what the devil always does. Christ refuses--He will not turn rocks that can’t feed anyone into bread, and perfect Love will not manipulate the world to suit purely selfish ends.

Jesus answered, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” To refute the Devil’s illusions, Jesus turns to Scripture, to the book of Deuteronomy, the book of the Law and commandments given to Moses. Jesus’ words, however, suggest something more fundamental than sifting through a list of verses to find one that will tell him how to act and what to say. “Living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” describes what it means to live in the knowledge that before we have any interests of our own, and long after such things will matter, we already belong to God.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down. This is the temptation to remake the world so that it suits our ends. It is the temptation to remain in a state of permanent adolescence, to imagine that we can live free from responsibility and free from the consequences of our actions. Note two things. First, there is enough truth in what the Devil says to give it a semblance of truth. He is able even to quote Scripture in apparent support for his proposal. Secondly, the devil has no power to throw Jesus down, he can only suggest that he does. In the same way, the devil has power only to entice us; we must choose to throw ourselves down into danger.

The devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. The third temptation is more basic still. The tempter offers a destructive slavery behind the illusion of independence and power. It was the same illusion with which he tricked Adam and Eve in the beginning. He promised that they would be as gods, knowing good and evil. He promised that they would be as gods, knowing good and evil. Instead, when they grasped at power they discovered they had rejected God as the Supreme Good and they came to experience the evil of rejecting Paradise also.

The disciplines of Lent provide a means for us to go out into the wilderness with Christ. The account of the forty days in the wilderness and the last three temptations describe the basic ingredients which combine to make Lent a time of spiritual growth.

The greatest of all the disciplines of Lent is prayer. But fasting, almsgiving and other spiritual disciplines also lead us into the wilderness with Christ, a place of consolation and rest and a place where the Spirit strengthens us to wrestle with ourselves and with temptation. If we think that we do not need such aids to spiritual growth, it is a clear sign that we still harbour many illusions about ourselves. Lent is a very good time to allow God to replace these illusions with a life-giving knowledge of reality, with a vision of the world and of ourselves as we can learn to see them through the eyes of Christ.

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