PRINT

EMAIL

Every year Washington, DC, along with every other city and town in America, is filled with a vast and silent witness to Christian faith in the face of inevitable death.

On Ash Wednesday, forehead after forehead displays two black smudges in the shape of a cross.

Ashes: Memento mori. Remember that you shall die. “Dust you were and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19). The Cross: Christ died; he died for you.

In these 40 days that follow, that same witness is evident in thousands of small denials—walking past the ice cream at the supermarket, ordering water instead of Diet Coke, making an extra effort to serve others and give to those in need, turning off the TV, or more discipline in reading, prayer, contemplation and worship.

It would, however, be woefully inaccurate to view Lent as simply or even primarily a season of denial. Instead, Lent is a great affirmation. It tells the truth about life—or, if you prefer, it affirms a core truth commitment of a Christian worldview: There is more to life than this world of time and space.

After His baptism by John, “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1-11). During Lent we join Jesus in the desert and there we share His temptations and, by grace, His victory.

Satan’s great temptation has always been the temptation to believe that this world of matter is all that matters. Jesus in the desert and we during Lent refuse to fall for it.

Jesus ate nothing for 40 days—about as long as a human can safely last with no food. Saint Matthew notes dryly, “he was hungry.”

What is more material and this-worldly than food, that daily reminder of our physicality? “If you are the Son of God,” the tempter said, “tell this stone to become bread.”

Jesus saw the worldview inherent in Satan’s words. It was the temptation to materialism or at least to practical materialism that believes in God, but behaves as if this world is all that matters. It was a temptation to a way of life that may, for example, go to church on Sunday and say grace before meals, but otherwise is entirely tied up in the here and now.

Jesus directed His eyes beyond this world, “Man does not live by bread alone,” He told the tempter, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

The world did not create itself, it was not always here, and the laws of nature do not sustain it. Instead it came into being by the divine Word that called it out of nothingness and still directs it. As important as the material world is, there is more to reality than the material world.

In Matthew’s account, the devil took Jesus to the high wall of the Temple (4:5-6). “Throw yourself off and God who controls the world and has spoken a word promising you protection will insure a safe landing. Meanwhile the crowds will watch in amazement. Success is sure to come as a result.” He asked Jesus to use the temple not as a place to worship God and to point beyond this world (the temple’s intended purpose), but as a springboard for success and fame in this world.

Finally, “the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you, he said, ‘if you bow down and worship me.’” He tempted Jesus with the worldly power toward with his own demonic and disordered lust is directed. It is another invitation to ignore any reality aside from what can be seen, touched, and heard.

Writing about Satan at The Catholic Thing, Georgetown University professor Fr. James Schall quoted Raïssa Maritain. Maritain wrote about the devil’s habitual shortsightedness:

Himself seduced by the fullness of his native gifts, he is the first of those who, until the end of time, will choose the finite present rather than the infinite to come. He preferred, and still prefers, hell to the alms of grace. Author of despair! Prince forever of illusory independence!

Jesus would not choose “the finite present rather than the infinite to come.” He came to redeem the finite present, but always had before His eyes the reality that is beyond this material world. That transcendent reality gives this material world the meaning, purpose, and direction it lacks on its own.

Email This Article

---

Print This Article

---

Share This Article

What You Can Do:

Pray for this Issue

Volunteer in this Area

Donate to this Initiative

Fr. Schall went on to comment:

Final happiness is not in this world. It can never be found there either by science or politics. Yet that is the only alternative of anyone who rejects a transcendent order that includes each human being within the end for which he is created, namely, to live the inner life of the Triune God in the grace granted to him.

When we keep a Lenten fast, denying ourselves good things, we affirm that we were made for more than this world. Our “bread” is of a different order that is no less real that what we put into our mouths. Lent curbs our desire for the short-lived success we can achieve in this world. It redirects our shortsighted, disordered lusts into rightly ordered desires and thus in light of inevitable death prepares us for the reality of eternal life.

Jim Tonkowich is a senior fellow for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and a scholar at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.