Spending Lent in the Desert

Forty days and forty night. Most of us can likely see the ready connection that the length of our Lenten observance shares with Christ’s own life and experience. We are told in the Gospel of Luke that Jesus, upon the completion of His baptism in the Jordan, “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil” (Luke 6:1-2). Jesus immediately receives a commission to go to the desert for a time after being baptized, and we are told that this is an encounter that the Holy Spirit leads Him into.

The setting of the desert, though, is one that we can easily think of in terms of a physical location. It is a place devoid of any meaningful amount of vegetation or water, and a place that is largely unoccupied. The environment can be harshly variable, going from harshly hot temperatures during the day to uncomfortably cold at night. Without the proper provisions, a stay in the desert is likely going to be a rather unpleasant one, to say the least, simply because it can very quickly remind one of how vulnerable they really are without the necessities and even the comforts of life.

However, in the story of Christ’s Temptation in the desert, the setting of the desert is about more than just a physical location. Certainly, when Jesus goes into the desert, He took nothing to eat, and by the end of those forty days, He was hungry. This simple fact shows us that Jesus, in addition to being truly God, has indeed become truly human. He enters into the desert and experiences something that we’d expect to also undergo if we entered the desert in a similar fashion. Yet, He enters that desert to experience that spiritual strength and rigor that results from those forty vulnerable days, spent growing closer to and more hungry for the relationship He has with His Father.

The amazing thing is that, due to the Church’s liturgical calendar, we now do just that. We spend these same forty days in the desert during our Lenten season. Now, we certainly understand that this isn’t a physical desert in the same sense, but we are given that same acute sense of deprivation. We go through Lenten practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving because they show us spiritually how we enter into the desert. How we fast because there is no food. How we give to others because we have compassion to them in their need. How we pray, because our senses have been heightened because we enter that mental and spiritual space where, because of the “desert” environment Lent offers, we learn to rely on God alone as our support and our strength.

This desert is also a reality that we may often enter into without choice. We may, for example, experience that desert space in prayer, because we may experience a time of “dryness” or desolation, as prayer becomes difficult, or it can be challenging to see where God is at that time. Maybe the circumstances of life may offer us a feeling of vulnerability or hunger as well. Perhaps we have suffered a tremendous loss, and we hunger for God’s presence and healing. We may be suffering from injustice, whether in our personal lives or even in what we see going on in our world. It could be that we are simply in that dry time in our prayer, and we desire tremendously to have God clearly show us the way or perhaps just show us where He is in our lives. It is in these moments that we want and hunger for God because we have entered into desert space in a spiritual way.

The beauty and challenge of the Lenten season is the fact that we are invited to be more vulnerable with God, and we are given that opportunity to more deliberately hunger for God. We enter into that desert moment with Christ, because it gives us that closer encounter, not just during the season of Lent, but especially in those moments in our lives that put us into the desert in other ways, and we need that closeness to God, not simply to survive, but also to thrive, even in life’s hardest and most difficult moments.

The Spirit that lead Christ into the desert is calling to you and I. Are we willing to go into that desert for a time to experience that radical hunger that only God can truly satisfy? Will we forsake every other comfort to follow Christ, the one true comfort, even in the most difficult moments life may offer?