The Secret Weapon
Readings for 1st Sunday of Lent
Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert…
Remember what happened right before this? That’s right, Jesus’ Baptism. I knew you knew that…
So Jesus is standing in the waters of the river Jordan, John baptizes him with water, and the heavens open up and the Spirit like a dove descends and a voice from heaven says, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” In some sense, at baptism, Jesus doesn’t necessarily need to receive any sort of grace, He’s God, but you could say that at Baptism, he received his identity and mission. He is the beloved Son of God, he is the Messiah, who’s come to save us, he is the King of kings.
So normally, when you have a savior or a king who has just come into power, what do you expect them to do? Normally, you’d expect them to clean house right? If He is your savior and king, he’ll go after all those who are oppressing you and he’ll go to battle to overthrow the enemy. So naturally, what did all the Jews think Jesus came to do?… Overthrow the Roman government that were oppressing the Jewish people. And what is the first thing that Jesus does instead? He goes into the desert.
From the beginning of his ministry, he shows us that He is not the kind of Messiah that people think. And that His Kingdom is not the Kingdom of the world. Jesus goes into the desert not to fight some earthly enemy, but to fight with THE Enemy himself, the prince of the world, the devil.
Jesus went to the desert to do battle with Satan. “To be tempted by the devil… for forty days and forty nights.”
My brothers and sisters, the Spirit of the Church also leads us into the forty days of Lent, and in these forty days, if we truly are serious about fasting, almsgiving and prayer, we, too, will be doing battle with the enemy, do battle with our temptations. This is spiritual warfare. That’s why in the Collect (the opening prayer) for Mass on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, the Church gave us this prayer:
Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting
this campaign of Christian service,
so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils,
we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.
You know, I love the stories of the desert fathers and mothers, these are people who in the 4th century went into the desert themselves in search for God and to do battle with their own temptations and demons.
The desert mother, Theodora, tells a story of a hermit who was able to banish demons. She asked the demons: “What drives you away from this holy hermit? Is it his fasting?” “We do not eat or drink,” replied the demons. “So is it his vigils?” “We do not sleep,” they replied. “Is it his separation from the world?” “Of course not; we live in deserts ourselves,” said the demons. “So,” asked Theodora, “what power drives you away then?” And the demons replied: “Nothing can overcome us, except humility.”
Humility is the key to this spiritual battle.
I would even say that, for me, Humility is surest sign of Holiness. If you want to know if someone is truly on the way to holiness, look at how authentically humble they are.
Think about it, think about all the human interactions and relationships that go wrong, whether it’s in bitter arguments or wars, if you examine it closely, you’ll find it’s usually because somewhere there’s a lack of humility and an excess of arrogance or pride. This is what happened with our first parents, Adam and Eve.
The serpent first instills doubt about God’s trustworthiness by asking the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” and the women answers: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.” Then the serpent goes for the pride: “You certainly will not die! No God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods!” And THEN, now that her pride is puffed up, the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.
The desire to be “like gods,” the desire to be divine, is what defeats both Adam and Eve. They believe the serpent’s words that what God had told them was a lie, and that they should be divine, that they should be god. Every temptation that we undergo, is in some sense this exact struggle. We have the temptation to try to act as if we are the divine center of the universe, that what God has revealed to us is not trustworthy and that we know best. And if we begin to believe this lie, we will find ourselves simply repeating the same mistake of Adam and Eve in our own lives.
We need humility. Sometimes people can mistake what humility is. Humility is not putting oneself down, or playing down who we are. It is not living in constant humiliation. St. Teresa of Avila says simply that, “Humility is truth.”
Humility is living with the truth of who we are and the truth of who God is. Thus we have to learn to live with both the truth of our weaknesses and strengths, but also the truth of our radical dependence on God. Scripture says that “anything is possible with God,” but “without God, you can do nothing.”
In our fasting, in our Lenten practices, we are slowly reminding ourselves of this truth. The truth that “we do not live on bread alone but from every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” The truth that we shouldn’t be presumptuous and “put God to the test.” And the truth that we should “not worship anything or person other than the Lord, our God.” Jesus knew the Father and he also knew who he was, for the sky opened up and a dove descended and a voice from the heavens said to him: “You are my beloved Son.” This is the source of his humility, this also should be the source of our own humility. We too are beloved sons and daughters of God the Father through Jesus Christ.
This Lent, fight confidently as beloved sons and daughters of God the Father. Know that every battle that we win, is not because of our own efforts but because of God’s grace and that every battle that we lose, is simply a reminder that we are not God and that we need to turn to him even more. Even if we fail in our Lenten practices, as long as we are humble and turn to God to begin again, we will be able to defeat the enemy, and in the end come out victorious in the end. Humility is our secret weapon.
