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First Sunday of Lent (B): Read Mark 1: 12-15
To talk of the Holy Spirit on the first Sunday of Lent may seem a little premature. We tend to “limit”
our thinking and praying to the Holy Spirit to the time of Pentecost and confirmation. Perhaps we do this because our understanding
of the Holy Spirit is weak or vague. Yet our faith is clear! Pentecost presents Him as a powerful wind, as tongues of fire.
At the last supper, Jesus speaks of Him as the Consoler, the Paraclete, the Witness to the truth of Jesus’ own mission
in the sight of the Father. Jesus also says of the Spirit that He will lead the Church to the fullness of truth and, in a
more solemn way, that the Spirit will convict, and eventually convince, the world of its sin of unbelief. Then there are those
series of comforting words which capture one or other gift or fruit of the Holy Spirit. Still, today’s Gospel highlights
something unsuspected, unexpected, strange even, about the Holy Spirit.
Listen again to the Gospel’s opening words: “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained
in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan.” Jesus is driven, compelled by the Holy Spirit to face the fundamental
dilemma of every human being: either to choose obedience to what is true and good as established by God, or to choose disobedience
to the same, and so to surrender to the dominion of Satan. As true man, Jesus was tempted in every way that we are; equally,
as true man, and not only as true God, He was victorious over every temptation because He freely chose the Father’s
will. As He Himself says at one point in St. John’s Gospel: “Who among you can accuse me of
sin?” But in Mark’s Gospel of today, we see that it is the Holy Spirit who drives Jesus into the
thick of the battle of what is the profoundest meaning of being human, of sharing in fallen, ambiguous, mortal, human
nature. The thick of the battle is precisely the agony of sustaining confident trust in the Father and practical obedience
to His Will. This reverses the Fall of Adam. Surrendering to the easier tendency within us to assert our own perception of
what is true and good accelerates the Fall with the force of spiritual gravity. We could put it this way: as the first Adam
was driven by the Spirit into the garden of Eden to be tested as to his willingness to obey God’s ways, but succumbed
to the clever, the fascinating, yet the corrupting suggestions of Satan, so Jesus, the new Adam, is driven into the desert
by the Spirit for the same purpose: i.e. to let resonate within His entire human nature, not the words of excuse of Adam (“It
was her fault!”), but those words we know so well, “Father, Iet Your will be done in me! Let Your Kingdom come
in me!”
This Spirit-driven battle and agony of Jesus will last until He gives up the Spirit on the Cross. His free and persevering
choice of faithful obedience to the Father sows the seed of the new creation, the new Adam, and of the possibility of redemption
for the old Adam. It is a seed which blossomed in His Resurrection, but which will flower in its fulness and attain its highest
intensity of aroma at the general Resurrection of all the faithful from the dead.
Here lies the substance of our hope of personal redemption; here lies the pattern of what must be reproduced in
each of us, if the old Adam or Eve in us is to be renewed and flourish with redeeming grace. The battle of temptation in the
desert of life is, on one side, the work of the Holy Spirit driving us to choose Christ as our strength, our wisdom, our Mighty
Hero, our King, Companion and Lord. On the other side, that battle is fought by the connivance between the person of Satan
(and Satan does exist!) and our own personal evil, with the aim of rejecting Christ, of killing Christ, of declaring the death
of God. This is the warfare of Lent, it is the warfare which underlies our daily and life-long struggles to choose what is
true and good and beautiful in the sight of God. But unless we engage in this battle, our faith is at best an intellectual
prop to justify our ideological preferences; our hope is a naive and presumptuous optimism to avoid facing the truth about
ourselves; our love, however intensely felt and protested, is reduced to mere emotion, a faint and distant echo of the last
cry of the dying Christ.
Temptation is not sin. You do not have to confess your temptations! Sin is the free but wrong use of the good things
God has given us: goods of nature and goods of grace. But temptation is the opportunity we need to use those gifts
aright, according to God. The right choice in the hour of temptation is to allow the waters of our baptism, not to dry up,
but to well up within us, lifting us from one degree of openness to the Kingdom’s presence within us to a higher and
more intense degree of the same. Temptation is the way by which God tests us to trust Him, and also to let us see what
the motivations of our hearts really are. Jesus humbly accepts the same challenge by being driven by the Spirit to encounter
Satan and all his works and pomps, to do battle with him - and to prevail.
Temptation, then, is not for temptation’s sake. Because of Christ’s victory, temptation is the route by
which we enter ever more deeply into His mind, His sentiments, His Heart, His style, His sufferings and His joy. The grace
of the Holy Spirit we receive in different ways in the sacraments and through the Scriptures works itself out, establishes
and consolidates itself when, with freedom and transparency of intention, we stand up for Christ and stand with Him against
Satan and his sophisticated, but all too boring, works of destruction. Only by passing through the fire of temptation, driven
by the Spirit and with our hearts fixed on the Face of Christ, will we be able to respond to Christ’s call to repentance.
For repentance, although made up of small and single acts (which are very important), needs to become more: that more is not
just a way of thinking, nor even just a life-style, but must become the very core of who we are and what it means to be who
we are. Belief in the Gospel is not simply a catechetical knowledge of its doctrine; no, it is an inner revolution, to allow
the Spirit to break our hearts and to plant deep within us a new heart. When that new heart is read in one’s eyes or
expressed to others, it overflows with the truth and grace of the Heart of Christ Himself.
So it is the driving Spirit of Jesus who brings about in us the transformation, the transfiguration of our whole selves
to Jesus. Certainly, He prompts us, He inspires us, but He also drives us to accept and follow Christ’s call to authentic
human and Christian maturity. The Kingdom of Heaven is not so much an other-worldly place as the
crowning of our free and persevering response to the work of the Blessed Trinity within us. The Holy Spirit is the driving
force of this work, Jesus is the model and pattern of this work, the Father of mercies is the goal of this work. It is in
the Father’s Heart alone that we will find the fulfilment of the deepest yearnings of our humanity, for it was He Himself
who placed those yearnings within us. Our yearnings for Him are but a spark of His very own yearnings for us, for each one
and for all.
So fear not in the hour of temptation! For, if we would only believe it, it is also the hour of deliverance, of grace
and salvation! Recognize it as a graced opportunity to surrender to the work of God in you: to bring you to repentance, to
give you a believing, Gospel heart, and to bring you home to the Heart of God, the only destiny truly worthy of the human
being He has created and redeemed by the Blood of His Beloved Son. And when you get wounded in the battle, let the Spirit
drive you to the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist that you may be healed. Wounds inflicted by evil are sweet and seductive,
but if left untended they quickly fester and poison the soul. The wounds inflicted by God make us face up to the bitter truth
of our misery so as to heal us with His abounding mercy, poured out for us in the cup of salvation.
My brothers and sisters, God does not test us beyond our ability, so trust in Him whatever trials and temptations come
your way. Resolve anew this Lent to be companions of Jesus and to let the driving power of His Spirit be your courage and
strength to be conformed ever more fully to the beautiful and glorious Son of God.
Msgr. Peter Magee
St. Matthew’s
Cathedral, Washington
10.00 am Mass, Sunday, March 9th, 2003
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