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| 'Desert Speed,' James Xu |
OUR TREK THROUGH LIFE IS ONE BIG SOJOURN through a desert
wilderness. An Egypt left behind. A Promised Land ahead. With the haunting
allure of Egypt’s onions and garlic tugging at one’s appetite along the way,
whilst manna is providentially sprinkled along one’s path as strength for the
journey ahead. The sun beating down one moment, eliciting sweat and angst; feet
heavy, body sore, mind taxed—an entree from purgatory or hell; and a cool
refreshing spring the next. Bringing with it fresh hope, new vision, and
awakened creativity and motivation—as though a slice of paradise has been
served early.
All in all, it’s the natural ‘up’ and ‘down’ fluctuation
of the life we’re used to—indicative of our fallen human state. A fluctuation
which C.S. Lewis calls the law of undulation.[1]
That’s the big picture. That life here bellow is one big
desert—on the threshold of the heavenly land of promise at best, with Pharaoh
and his army, that is the devil and his warping of the world, ever at our heels
threatening to enslave us to the dark ways of our false-selves, if only we
yield up the quest which those around us, like the Israelites of old, deride as
hopeless and even fantastical.
The Many Deserts of Life
Yet on another level, on the small scale, we pass through
hundreds and thousands of deserts in a lifetime. In fact, every day is in some
way a desert in itself, with a mini Promised Land at the end.
On the literal side of things, we taste the Promised Land
of eternal bliss when at the end of a day we hit the hay and find that welcome
rest. Such rest can sacramentally lead us to savour the grace of eternal rest
won by Christ, who rested in death after completing the work of the new
creation on the cross, declaring “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). Just like the
Father who rested when He had finished the work of creation.
Yet we don’t always find this tangible rest.
Fortunately, that’s no hindrance at all to experiencing God’s
grace. For on the spiritual side, having passed through the desert of a day,
its Promised Land lies in the fact that God has led us safely through another
day, despite its foibles and pains, for He loves us, and through our repentance
and joyful trust, He will turn the dry sandy day that has been into the milk
and honey of our sanctification and that of others. For “we know that to them
that love God all things work together unto good” (Rom 8:28).
The Promised Land
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| 'Promised Land,' Sara Credito. |
This is to say nothing of the tastes of the Promised Land
we find in the midst of our daily sojourn, above all in our manna which is the Eucharist,
that nourishes the life of grace within us, so that in turn we might taste
Christ present in our neighbour, in the created world around us, in the circumstances
of our life, and in our very own souls.
In a particular way, every week is also a kind of desert
ending with its mini Promised Land of rest and contentment—the Sabbath, which
according to a Jewish Talmudic teaching, is a one-sixtieth taste of the Promised Land of
the world to come.[2]
The Desert of Lent
Then we come to another kind of desert which comes
annually: Lent. A liturgical season by which the Holy Spirit through the Church
drives her pilgrim members into the wilderness of penance, to pray, fast and
give alms in greater fervour. Not just for the purpose of imitating Christ’s
post-baptismal forty-day and forty-night fast in the desert, but for the purpose
of receiving through our imitative Lenten disposition, the very grace Christ
won for us in the desert all those years ago. The grace of deliverance from
slavery to the whims of our selfish will, which because of concupiscence
inclines itself towards choosing the three lusts (1 Jn 2:15-16) of satisfying
our flesh; our eyes—which according to Augustine is to seek to quell our appetite
to know out of vain curiosity; and the pride of life, by wanting to be esteemed
as somebodies.[3]
In the desert of Lent, we find the freedom to be who we
are, without the suffocating and complicating influences that creep in and steel
our heart to God’s tenderness.
Such is the effect of the desert, which etymologically
can be literally understood as “thing abandoned” or “thing forsaken”.[4] Since
in this stripped-down and barren place—or in our sense, a state—we ourselves become
through grace, and with Christ, as a “thing abandoned,” resulting from our
renouncement of the world, the flesh and the devil.
Yet not merely abandoned in the negative sense of
being abandoned from or by these things, but in the positive
sense of being abandoned to and for God in Christ. This is the
whole purpose of Lent: a liturgical desert of fasting, prayer and alms giving, designed
to draw us out of the city apartment of our cosy inwardness where Christian
mediocrity likes us to dwell in the manner of pious individualism—perhaps whilst
belonging to a religio-intellectual clique—and deeper into the Promised Land of
our God, wherein we can nourish our hearts on the milk of love of neighbour,
and the honey of divine love.
Perennial Access to the Promised Land
It is true, the Promised Land— the real and existing
archetype which speaks of the object and the objects of our supernatural hope—can
seem like a faraway dream. Something for tomorrow, not today. For we must await
the full manifestation of the Promised Land in the life to come, and as the
life to come.
Yet notwithstanding this fact, we have perennial access
to the Promised Land, for the Promised Land came to us in the Incarnation, and it
still does today in the Sacrament of the Altar, and by extension in the secret
recesses of a believing heart, which nourishes itself by reception and
Adoration of this Mana from above, wherein is contained the milk and honey of
the twin loves.
Enter the Wilderness
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| 'Elijah Fed by An Angel,' Ferdinand Bol, 1660-1663. |
In 1 Kings 19 we read of Elijah, fleeing into the desert
from Jezebel who sought to kill him (much like the Infant Christ and the Holy Family, who fled into the wilderness to escape the wrath of Herod). There in the wilderness Elijah rested under a tree where he was eventually visited by an angel and was given nourishment for the journey that lay ahead.
Enter the desert wilderness of Lent and what will we
find? The Abandoned One, the Forsaken One, stripped naked, bloody, thirsty and
exhausted, hanging on a tree, held fast by Triune love more than three nails;
and the shadow cast by the cross and His outstretched arms, which extends
itself through every age, right unto this very day.
Here within this shade we are beckoned to rest—just like
Elijah. Yet whereas Elijah was nourished by an angel on temporal food, we are
nourished by God Himself on the Bread of Angels: the very Body, Blood, Soul and
Divinity of Christ. The very medicine that realigns our body’s flesh to the
praiseworthy purposes of God, and replaces the proud hunger to be somebodies
with a hunger to share in Christ’s abjection. Whilst the disordered craving
of our eyes, inherited since Eve goggled with pleasure over the forbidden fruit
(Gen 3:6)—curious to know and experience (to taste) right and wrong—finds its
remedy in an adoring gaze of the Abandoned One in the Holy Eucharist. In
desiring to see Him face to face, and to come to know Him in quiet intimacy.
Promised Rest
This is the desert call of Lent. A call repeated every day of our lives but which takes on an emphasis in this liturgical season. To come away and return to the Cross. To rest beneath its homey shadow, and to cover and nourish ourselves on the love pouring from His side more abundantly than the wine flowed at the wedding of Canna, and more than did the honey and milk in that temporal Promised Land.
In the Gospel of Matthew our Lord invites us to share in the mystery of the Cross, to shoulder its yoke in love that we might find spiritual rest:
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."(Mt 11 28-30).
Suffering is characteristic of life in our post-Fall world. No one can escape it, and everyone wants to find peace and rest - a life free from hassles. Yet here our Lord is telling us that the peace and rest we desire, the Promised Land we seek, is found not by running away from the crosses of our life - which will hunt us down anyway! - but by embracing them, accepting them, and resigning ourselves to them. (Resigning ourselves to crosses that come our way and present themselves, not by being masochists, nor by resigning ourselves to other people's sufferings as some glossed excuse to act indifferently; since shouldering our yoke necessarily involves lightening someone else's load).
We carry out such resignation to our crosses not for the mere sake of it, and not out of the strength of self-will, but by bringing our crosses to Jesus the Afflicted One for the fulfillment of His mysterious purposes, in the confidence that uniting ourselves with His sufferings, He will strengthen us to bear the plight at hand, and will pour into us that grace of peace and rest which is the wages of a life lived in union with Him.
To shoulder our yoke requires faith that God is walking with us in the midst of our sufferings. Surrendering to His Will in this way turns the yoke of our crosses from aimless desert wonderings into speedways directly into God's heart where true peace is found. It also turns each cross from a foreboding obstacle of a Red Sea, like the Red Sea was at first for the Israelite's, into a parted Red Sea - serving as a shortcut towards the Promised Land of our spiritual desires.
Come Away and Rest A While
Our Lord is with us in our desert experiences, and the Cross, like the shade of the tree which sheltered Elijah from the heat of the sun and from the fears of persecution, offers us a refuge of meaning and rest. The words of the Cantor resonate deeply in this context:
With great delight I sat in his shadow,and his fruit was sweet to my taste,He brought me to the banqueting house,and his banner over me was love.[5]
What else is the fruit but the nourishment of Jesus' Body and Blood; the banqueting house but the Immaculate Heart of Mary wherein the Almighty chose to dwell; and the banner of love naught but the Precious Blood, commingled with the water that gushed from His side.
“Let Christ crucified be enough for you,” writes Saint
John of the Cross, “and with him suffer and take your rest.” [6] It
would seem like a paradox, to find rest in the Cross. But it’s true, and it’s
the message of Lent. That in desert of this life, and in its numerous deserts,
among them Lent itself, we can find that old rugged Cross, that Tree of Life with
its salvific shade, upon which hangs our Promised Land—not as a plot of land, but as
a God-man, resting in our hearts and disguised under the appearance of bread and wine, calling us to "come away... and rest a while" (Mk 6:31). [7]
[1]
Undulation meaning: a wave like motion. On the law of undulation see C.S.
Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chs. 8-9.
[2]
“Sabbath is one-sixtieth part of the world to come.” Babylonian Talmud, Berakoth
57b, available at http://www.come-and-hear.com/berakoth/berakoth_57.html
[3]
“For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which lies in the gratification of
all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves who “are far from You perish”,
there pertains to the soul, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain
and curious longing, cloaked under the name of knowledge and learning, not of
having pleasure in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. This
longing, since it originates in an appetite for knowledge, and the sight being
the chief among the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, is called in divine
language, “the lust of the eyes.” Augustine, Confessions, Book X, Chp
35, 54, available at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110110.htm
[4]
“from Late Latin desertum…
"thing abandoned" (used in Vulgate to translate ‘wilderness’), noun
use of neuter past participle of Latin deserere ‘forsake’” Online Etymology Dictionary, “Desert,” http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=desert
[6]
John of the Cross, Maxims and Counsels, Maxims on Love, 13, available at
http://www.jesus-passion.com/Minor_Works_StJohn.htm
[7]
“the promised land… is the image of eternal life” (Compendium of the CCC, 253),
and it is in Christ in whom this life is lived, who is “The way, the truth, and
the life” (Jn 14:6).
