Whither this desert experience of Lent?

Last Wednesday, we began our 40-day Lenten journey with the universal Church by getting our faces smeared with dirt at Mass.  Some of us may have been dreading it, and some of us actually do look forward to this time of austere living.  But I am sure that there are many who are ambivalent about Lent, seeing it as just another liturgical season that we drift into, and drift out of year after year. 

In yesterday’s Gospel text at Mass, we would have heard how Jesus was driven to the desert to be tempted for 40 days after his baptism in the river Jordan.  Our Lenten journey is just as long, and in a way, we too are to join Jesus in the desert. 

Why the desert?  In the Semitic mind, the desert conjures up all sorts if images.  For the most part, the desert is seen as a foreboding place where danger lurks and where evil is present - hardly a place which one willingly goes into.  Yet we are to willingly do just that – enter the symbolic desert of our lives by acts of penance and fasts, so that we can encounter what we fear most – our true selves, with masks and pretenses removed.

Our lives can easily be filled with distractions of various sorts each day.  From the moment we wake up till the moment we close our eyes at the end of the day, our senses are constantly filled with a barrage of sights, sounds and smells.  As if this is not enough, millions go through the day with their ears plugged with earphones pumping sounds and noises to supplement what seems to already be the cacophony of an audio overload.  It amazes me still, how 'innovative' inventors constantly come up with gadgets that make us more and more busy and multi-tasking, filling up almost every waking hour with sensory overloads, as if we are not already overloaded.

With these self-created distractions, we can easily be misled into thinking that we are in that world where there is perfectly nothing wrong with us, simply because we don’t have any pressing need to face ourselves, and with hardly any need to strip ourselves of our distractions and illusions.

In a desert, especially when one is alone, there is nothing to hear and see but our own heartbeat and our own thoughts.  The desert had always been a place where the Desert Fathers of old would retreat to for the sole purpose of getting in touch with the God within themselves.  It also helped them to face their own demons and to exorcise them through facing them directly with no false pretenses.  To be sure, it is one of the hardest and arduous journeys one can ever make in life, as well as one of the most necessary.

Notice that we are told in the passage that the angels came and ministered to Jesus in the desert, but only after he had been tempted.  When we dare to go deep in our Lenten journey of self-discipline and self re-discovery, we will undoubtedly encounter our dark sides if we are really honest with ourselves.  We may even see sides of ourselves that we don’t recognize or prefer not to admit. 

However, we do not go there alone.  If we are in the right spirit of Lent, we enter to that place within not alone, but with the Spirit of God as our guiding light and strength.  Those of us who are blessed with spouses or good soul friends who really know us and have seen our darkest sides can do a very courageous thing - Ask them to name a few of the dark areas of our lives which we need to encounter this Lent. 

Why is this a courageous thing to do?  Because if we are honest enough, we know that it is our spouses who can name the one or two things which are most hidden from ourselves, areas which we never knew was our Achilles' heel(s).  It’s being vulnerable with a new twist.  I personally know of a couple who asks each other to name their sins for them before they go for a Sacramental confession.  Apparently, it’s always a surprise to find out that such-and-such a sin was something that caused a friction in their relationship, principally because they had easily glossed it over from their own personal point of view - that quadrant in the Johari window that is know to others, but which is also in our own blind spot.

Our willingness to go into our private deserts gives us new ears to hear and new eyes to see – both the world, and ourselves.  Then, when we reach Easter, may we all see a brighter and better world with our senses refreshed and hearts renewed.