the desert

The desert. What does "desert" bring to mind? Note... we are talking about the desert... not dessert, okay? Desert being a dry, hot, often sandy place, dessert being cake and ice cream - ooh, sorry to bring that up if you gave it up for Lent... which would mean you were fasting from dessert in the Lenten desert... but that's kind of beside the point. ;-)

Anyways, the desert. We know Christ fasted in the desert for 40 days before beginning His public ministry. That desert was a place of spiritual preparation, where physical fasting took on the spiritual dimension - as Hans Urs von Balthasar put it, "Emptying himself of the human and ordinary, he becomes aware of the dimensions of the cosmos that he, as Savior of the world, is to bring back to God."

And all of us have been in the desert of Lent for nearly 40 days now. Although our "fasts" are not nearly as extreme as Christ's, our Lenten desert is still a place of spiritual preparation, of growth - it is springtime, after all! Hopefully, we have all been striving to love God more deeply, learning to see and reverence his presence in all those around us, trying our best to "turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel" as we were exhorted on Ash Wednesday.

I think our own desert fast bears a deeper resemblance to the fast of Christ if we draw a kind of corollary to von Balthasar's words. If we empty ourselves of the human and ordinary, we become aware of the "dimensions" of the salvation wrought through Christ's suffering and death - how the Savior of the world brought us back to God.

+peace, and all good.