In Old Testament times, soldiers and warriors would be anointed with oil before battle. This weeks Gospel immediately follows Jesus' annointing by the Holy Spirit at his Baptism. Like the soldiers and warriors of old, following his anointing, Jesus is led by the Spirit to do battle in the desert with Satan.
To the biblical imagination, the desert is not only a place of trial and challenge, but the dwelling of the evil spirits. The Gospel mentioned the wild beasts—the desert predators—that also lurked there. Well, in the desert, Jesus encountered the greatest of predators—the Devil—he who Saint Peter says “lurks like a prowling lion looking for souls to devour”. This is the same predator that lurked in the garden of Eden under the form of a serpent.
Jesus went into the desert—into Satan's territory—deliberately—to begin his campaign of spiritual warfare against the powers of evil which would culminate in his ultimate victory over the powers of sin and death on the cross.
Now, you might say, well, what kind of fight is that anyway, Jesus who is God versus some fallen angel? There’s no challenge there. The devil is not God's equal. “By the blast of God his enemies perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed,” and all that. Of course Jesus is going to be come out victorious. But Jesus doesn’t confront Satan with a blast of divine lightning, but with his frail human nature.
St. Lawrence of Brindisi, a good Italian Franciscan saint from the 16th century comments: “Christ came into the world to do battle against Satan…He could have accomplished this by using the weapons of his …but in order that his victory might be the more glorious, he willed to fight Satan in our weak flesh. It is as if an unarmed man, right hand bound, were to fight with his left hand alone against a powerful army; if he emerged victorious, his victory would be regarded as all the more glorious. So Christ conquered Satan with the right hand of his divinity bound and using against him only the left hand of his weak humanity.”
Christian tradition has always recognized the spiritual battle as a dimension of the Christian life. Just as Jesus was tempted and tested, so are his disciples. Just as Christ was opposed by the hostile powers of evil, so are his disciples. And just as Christ was misunderstood and persecuted by the world, so are his disciples. But, just as Christ was victorious over the powers of sin and death, so, shall his disciples be, because, the victorious Christ dwells within them.
The Catechism says that all of human history is a story of combat with the powers of evil. It says, “The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day.” Think about it, up and down the centuries we have stories of men and women who choose good and men and women who choose evil. Think about how our nation's history—how greed and slavery and selfish men have compromised our nation's greatness.
Who here has not been affected by the powers of evil. Temptation is on every television channel, on every website, temptation to cheat our neighbor, to cheat on one's spouse, to cheat at school, to cheat at work.
“Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield,” the catechism says, “man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.”
The season of Lent provides the opportunity to take a stand against those temptations, to fight against the distractions which keep us from that integrity the catechism mentions.
The long history of the Church has preserved prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as indispensible practices for our spiritual integrity. Fasting for Christians isn’t just a sort of religious weight loss program. We don’t fast for the purpose of reducing our waist size. We fast in order to deepen our hunger and thirst for righteousness. Fasting and self-restraint are disciplines necessary for our eternal salvation and our Christian mission on earth.
Last night, here at St. Clare we began our Lenten Book Club “The Screwtape Letters” by the great 20th century Christian apologist C. S. Lewis. Screwtape is the name of a demon writing letters to his demon nephew with instructions on how to tempt the human assigned to him. Screwtape Letters is an excellent case study in the psychology of temptation, the tactics which the Enemy uses to turn our minds and hearts away from God.
For C.S. Lewis, losing our souls wasn't the result of one terrible sin, but a lifetime of cutting corners, of sliding very gradually into selfishness. The loss of one's soul, for C.S. Lewis, came as a result of many lost battles in which we, using our free will, choose bodily desire over faith.
We had a packed room last night, even when Cleveland is getting more snow than Anchorage Alaska and was colder than certain parts of Siberia, the devil drew a good crowd. And really, it wasn't the devil, it was the Lord, who teaches us, and arms us. If you aren't able to make the book club, consider doing some spiritual reading this Lent, that the challenges us to think about the spiritual life in a fresh way.
Firstly, this Lent we do well to take up the weapons of self-restraint: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. God has given us the weapons and the training, but it is up to us to use them. If we are pushovers to every impulse of our senses, every bodily desire, every fleshly temptation, we are not living the authentic Christian life.
Secondly, we have to remember, that we are in enemy occupied territory. We will be constantly bombarded with enemy propaganda. The enemy knows our weaknesses, he knows the tone of voice of our spouse to which we are the most impatient, he knows the websites to which to lead us, his hand is literally on the mouse, he knows how busy we are and how to distract us from dedicating time to prayer as we ought.
The enemy is smarter than us, and knows us better than we know ourselves. And so must must cling to Christ our victor.
So during Lent we become refamiliarized with our marching orders and in whose territory we are fighting, what the stakes are, what our weapons are, who are general is; we get back down to the bedrock basics of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, to do all we can in the battle for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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