10th February 2008Lent 1
Fr David Cherry
Genesis 2 : 15 – 17 & 3 : 1 – 7 ; Romans 5 : 12 – 19 ; Matthew 4 : 1 -
Give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to thy Spirit – words from the Collect for today.
The liturgy is a school of learning to desire God, finding it again; being given the words to express it corporately, together.
In Christian spirituality ‘desire’ is key. We are
made as desiring persons by God; made to desire God. In the
Liturgy, in Mass, the words are full of desire for God and God’s
desire for us. We hear how God longs to share his life with us, to be
in communion with us and for us to live in him. We come back to
this truth over and over again so that it can take us over. This
is the ground rhythm of our lives. God wants us. He is a
God of steadfast love, abounding in mercy, the prophet Joel told us on
Ash Wednesday. Return to me. Come back to me.
You are mine. This is who you really are. You are a
loved person in whom my soul delights who every minute is receiving who
you are, by your communion, in relationship with me.
“You have made us for yourself,” said St Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
The story of the allegorical Garden, Eden, is the story of desire being
distorted and becoming envy – envy of God. Satan,
that fallen creature of God, draws Adam and Eve away from their true
desire. They end up desiring what the Evil One desires –
his own power - and end up falling away from their true desire for God,
desiring power over others, an acquisitive desire, a desire to snatch
one’s identity or construct oneself, rather than receive who one
is as free gift from God.
To live from one’s true desire for God is the same as to realise
who one really is. This is what being saved is like: a
deep, and growing desire for God. As we said the psalms in
Evening Prayer last night – I realised how wonderful it is to be
in this dialogue of desire as the verses are passed rhythmically from
one side to the other.
The liturgy, worship, prayer is a process of recovering one’s
desire for God. So there’s a project: to notice through the
liturgy and the words of Scripture: where is God’s desire for me,
for us? Where are we expressing our desire for God? Where
is God promising to comfort and save me? Where are we responding to
this desire? And how does it make me feel? Is it
there? What is it like? Do I desire God?
One can notice : Yes, this is true, this desire expressed here
resonates with me. Or one can notice that actually I don’t desire
what the words say. There is a gap, a dissonance. This is a
beginning of consciousness. Where am I? What is it I really
want then? Where does it come from? What or who has given
me these desires?
The liturgy is a school of learning to desire God, finding it again;
being given the words to express it corporately, together.
‘Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks so longeth my soul after thee O God.’ says
the psalmist. It is the reminding that only God can meet
our heart’s desire. And it is the reminding that we
are dependants, incapable of desiring God without God working in us:
Before being led out into the wilderness Jesus receives a confirmation
of who he really is in a theophany at the Jordan. “This is
my beloved Son. My favour rests on him.” Can I
hear this for myself? Can I hear God’s desire for me? Do I
want to live from here?
You and I are baptised into Christ. We are in Him as he is in the Father. This word ‘in’.
We are in relationship with him, but actually there is a finer
distinction to be made. We are in the relationship that he has
already established with us before we become conscious of it; a
relationship of loving desire that he freely has for all
Creation. To discover this, to see it, inhabit it, know it,
rejoice in it, feel it, is to discover a deep spiritual and theological
truth. This is the work of the liturgy on us.
Jesus is led by the Spirit out into the wilderness, into retreat, to
‘soak in’, if you like, this relationship with the Father,
to be in it, to be in the loving gaze of his Father, and to allow it to
take him over, to possess him. Jesus will live utterly at one
with the desire of the Father.
And it is there that he is tempted – as all the desert hermits
and as all Christians find. This is what Satan, the great
Accuser, the one who blames, cannot bear and must seek to undermine.
If thou be the Son of God… begins Satan, seeking to sow doubt and division.
It is the work of the Evil Spirit, says St Ignatius, to assault the
soul. It can’t possibly be true this faith that is at work in
you. It’s not real. You’ll never be as good as
them. Look how others think. You’re a failure.
How can you be so mad as to think you’re different? Thus he
goads and divides. Not only here in the wilderness but through
his best friends too – did Jesus not have to say to Simon Peter :
‘Get thee behind me Satan’?
St Ignatius of Loyola has much to say about the work of the evil spirit
and the good spirit in his spiritual exercises. For a soul that
realises its longing for God and is progressing towards God, the evil
spirit – that enemy of our human nature - harasses with anxiety,
to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious
reasonings. The good spirit, however provides courage and
strength, consolations, tears inspirations and peace. (# 315)
To a soul that is lost in its own desires and is progressing away from
god, the evil spirit, fills their imagination with sensual delights and
gratifications, the more readily to keep them in their vices and
increase the number of their sins. To such a soul the good spirit
works in a different way: making use of the light of reason, rousing
the sting of conscience to fill them with remorse. (#314)
This is the territory of the wilderness we are invited to enter these
forty days of Lent. Forty days of purgation, of discovering who
we really are, of setting free our desire for God.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy the souls in purgatory are full of
hope. They are realising what snarls up their lives, the
besetting sins, the false desires that hold us captive. They are
advancing, moving towards Paradise.
And so we pray this first Sunday of Lent : Give us grace to
discipline ourselves in obedience to thy Spirit; and, as thou knowest
our weakness, so may we know thy power to save. Amen