By Fr. Antony Christy, SDB –
THE WORD IN LENT – Saturday after Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2024 – Isaiah 58: 9-14; Luke 5: 27-32
Through the desert God leads us to freedom. Certainly the desert is not a place to make our home! The last two days we have been reflecting on the deep impacts that the experience of the desert can create within us, and how desert is not something from which we should run. That in no way makes the desert a place to be comfortable. Pope Francis reminds us in his message: God shapes his people, he enables us to leave our slavery behind and experience a Passover from death to life. Passover – that is the key to understanding.
The Word today invites us to develop three specific attitudes towards the deserts of our life, that we may experience this Passover:
The first is “through the desert” – that we have our eyes fixed on the horizon. The Passover experience is there, when we have passed through the desert. We cannot run the danger of making ourselves comfortable in the desert. It is a place of discomfort and dissonance that makes us constantly yearn for that perfection, not with a negative suppression of the present experienced but growing through it.
The second is God leads “us” – we are led as children together. We cannot make it a singled handed show! Doing away with the yoke, giving bread to the hungry and relief to the oppressed, restoring the ruins – these are ways proposed to get through this desert. We are called to pass over this desert in compassion and communion. Without these I cannot get through to the other side, let us beware, we may be building our castles right in the desert itself!
The third is the journey to “freedom” – that freedom comes with our decision making! We have to decide to leave everything behind and follow the One who leads; we have to make that absolute and clear choice, for whom and with whom we are! Jesus made that decision and paid the price. If we are his, we would make that decision and find true freedom, the freedom of the Spirit, the freedom the children of God.
God detests to see that we choose the desert and decide to die therein! The call is that we traverse it, we cross over, and move towards that passover experience, to that real freedom, to that experience of resurrection. The desert is to be traversed, traversed together!
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He holds doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him on.