Desert - a place of growth and realisation

THE WORD IN LENT - Friday after Ash Wednesday

February 16, 2024 - Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 9: 14-15

Through the desert, God leads us to freedom... therefore, the desert is not a place to be detested. However, it is difficult it could be, it is indeed a place of growth as it leads to a profound reflection and a resultant realisation. When we decide to go through the desert, it offers us a great opportunity to look at ourselves, reflect and arrive at realisations that would create changes within us for life, changes that would amount to a happy growth from within. Instead, if we look at the desert as something we enter with fear and reluctance, in our preoccupation with mere getting through it, we may miss all the opportunities for growth. 

The Word today presents to us the difference between these two attitudes in reference to the lenten penances we would have probably commenced with, in this holy season. Is it a painful starving or a pressurised abstinence that really matters for God? If these acts of penance, for instance, increase within us our irritability, or self-righteousness, or our sense of pride - of what use are these acts? Aren't they detrimental to our very personalities? That is why Jesus, along with those words of the first reading, redefines what a godly penance would be!

It is not about starving or going around with stern faces, but it is about relating to the other, having compassion for the other, speaking affectionately to the other, reaching out to those is need, keeping away our small joys in order that we can make someone else joyful, taking up a little cross in order that someone around me can really experience the love of God that was shared to them from the Cross by the Saviour. Our acts of penance should make us grow; they should make us more godly. Only then, they are Christic!

Pope Francis in the Lenten message reminds us of the two questions that are posed by God to us, two questions that God posed in the events of Genesis: where are you? and where is your brother? The former underlining the need to become aware of our interior dispositions and latter inviting us to open our eyes to the needs of the others and not get lost in our ego trips. This season we need to respond to those two questions - they would lead us to realisation and they would help us journey towards growth!