LETTING GOD INTO THE DESERT WITHIN

V/ My eyes are turned to you, O Lord.

R/ You are the joy and gladness of my youth.

V/ Grant me the Wisdom that sits by your throne.

R/ That I may dwell as a child in your presence.

Let us pray. Lord, in your loving design, you have drawn me here to encounter you in your Word and, in you, to find myself. Empower me by your Wisdom, that this meditation may be a fount of transformation and freedom, bearing fruit for my salvation and that of the whole Church. Amen

LETTING GOD INTO THE DESERT WITHIN

By Rev. Fr Emeka K. Agboeze, OCD

Ash Wednesday

Joel 2:12-18; Psalm 50(51): 3-6,12-14,17; 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6,16-18

‘Spare your people, Lord!’ These words of today’s first reading show clearly that something has gone wrong in our relationship with God. It is a desperate cry in the face of divine judgment; we plead to be spared because we are guilty; our conscience tells us exactly what we deserve; we deserve the wages of sin in full measure – death (cf. Rom. 6:23). Our sin has led us to dwell in a world that feels unhomely, causing us to long for the paradise we were created for. Instead of living in God’s presence, we find ourselves in a desert, filled with mourning and weeping.

Generally, we respond to this situation by creating our own garden for some respite. We create our own happiness, which we confuse with pleasure. We urbanise this desert in our quest for a lost paradise. But all human effort without God is futile. The city we seek to create cannot give us the peace we seek nor the happiness we desire. We have only succeeded in creating an illusory city where nothing satisfies us. The reality is that our city is only a prolongation of the desert that sin has created.

But instead of this man-made paradise, God, in his unfathomable mercy, creates a space for us where we can approach him and experience anew some paradisiacal refreshment. He gives us a benevolent desert. And this is the irony: while man-made paradise is, in reality, a desert, God’s own desert becomes for man a paradise where his peace is secure. God’s presence makes the difference.

The holy period of Lent invites us into this desert in which Adam’s fall is reversed. If Adam pridefully denied his guilt, we humbly confess our fault through the imposition of ashes. If sin expelled Adam from paradise, now repentance returns us there: a fruitful and refreshing desert, a paradise within, an interior Eden in our land of exile. Lent begins our own spiritual exodus in imitation of Israel’s journey. They went into the desert, but that desert became the place of covenant, of marriage with their Creator. The God whom Adam lost in the garden was found in the desert. God seeks to “seduce her and bring her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hos. 2:14).

Jesus in the Gospel seduces us into this interior desert, into the solitude of our heart, into our most private room. We must withdraw from the applause of men and return to our interior Carmel, where God refreshes us with his Word. In this garden, the desperate cry, ‘Spare your people, Lord!’ is transformed into a filial invocation, full of confidence in God’s mercy.

St Thérèse of Lisieux inspires us to cultivate this trust: A child who has sinned “throws himself into his father’s arms… Then, if that child asks his father to punish him with a kiss, I don’t think the happy father could harden his heart against his child’s filial trust.”

Let us ask: how ready are we to enter this desert? Are we prepared to abandon the pleasures which render our heart restless? Do I despair that my sins are too great? Let us pray with St Gregory: Give us self-control that springs from discipline of outward things, that fasting inward secretly the soul may purely dwell with Thee. Amen.