Among the Fathers of the Church a common interpretation of our Lord’s forty-day fast and temptation in the desert is atonement: Jesus was atoning for or setting right the failure of Israel in its forty-year sojourn in the wilderness. Israel was tested on multiple occasions and they failed, rebelling against “God and Moses.”
God tested His people with this purpose, as Moses says: “that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.” The purpose is clear: To make you see your need to depend on me, to make you see what is in your own hearts, I test you. What was in those hearts was a lot of ugly rebellion, sensuality, presumption, and ingratitude.
If Israel needed their failures and their attitudes set right, is that also true of us? Is something about us also getting set right by the Lord’s time in the wilderness? Do the contents of our hearts also need to be exposed?
The Church continues to call us to meet the Lord in His solitude during Lent so that we can give our undivided attention to the One who will tell us the entire truth about ourselves. Detachment from the things that often clutter our relationship with Him—such as entertainment and foods—should lead us primarily to a point where the contents of our hearts are revealed.
But this potentially painful revelation isn’t meant to end in discouragement. The desert is not only a place of privation and testing, but more so the privileged place of closeness with God: “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her,” says the Lord of His people.
As the thoughts of our hearts are revealed, so are the Lord’s tender mercies.
Father John Henry Hanson, O. Praem. is a Norbertine priest of St Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California. The Norbertines seek to bring the love of God to others through their monastic life of prayer as well as their outreach to others.
