Before beginning his public activity, Jesus, moved by the Holy Spirit, withdrew into the desert. There Jesus prayed and fasted for 40 days. It was a time when Jesus was put to the test by the devil who presented him with three temptations that are common in every person’s life: the pleasure of material possessions, the seduction of human power and the presumption of subordinating God to our own interests.
The scene of Christ’s temptations in the desert are renewed every year at the beginning of Lent. The liturgy invites believers to enter the desert with Jesus and to follow him on the distinctive penitential journey of this Lenten season.
The lonely and silent environment of the desert, away from the rumble and grumble of human activity, was also the place to which the first monks fled in ancient Roman times to find their peace with God. The desert became a symbol of an interior disposition in which is created an inner sanctuary of silence and peace.
Christ told Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going to.” It is this same silent Spirit that blows continually through the world, entering into the lives of people, helping to shape their destinies, mysterious in its workings, transfiguring them into a new relationship with their God.
Still, there are people whose hearts are closed to the everlasting freshness of the Spirit. These include Christians who say “it’s always been done that way”, and stop there.
If you have a heart closed to the newness of the Spirit, you will never reach the full truth. And your Christian life will be a half-and-half life- Pope Francis
These Christians worry Pope Francis as he sees them as idolaters and rebels who can never arrive at the fullness of the truth. He reminds them that Jesus tells us: “I will send you the Holy Spirit and He will lead you into the fullness of truth.”
The Pope said this in a recent reflection on the episode when Saul was rejected by God as King of Israel because he had disobeyed, preferring to listen to the people rather than the will of God. The people, after a victory in battle, wanted to offer a sacrifice of the best animals to God, because “it’s always been done that way”. But God, this time, did not want that.
“If you have a heart closed to the newness of the Spirit, you will never reach the full truth. And your Christian life will be a half-and-half life, a patched life, mended with new things, but on a structure that is not open to the voice of the Lord – a closed heart, so that you are not able to change the wineskins,” he said.
The Holy Spirit leads us into the full truth, he added. For this reason the Spirit needs an open heart, a heart that will not stubbornly remain in a situation of imagining that one’s own opinion is more important than the surprise of the Holy Spirit.
Adapting oneself to the word of God to be able to receive it requires what Pope Francis describes as “an ascetic attitude”. He gives the example of an electric appliance. If it doesn’t work, one sometimes needs an adaptor, “to adjust ourselves to the newness of God’s word”. Essentially, we need “to be open to new things”.
French author Paul Claudel (1868-1955), best known for his plays in which he explored the relationship between man, the universe and the divine, says of the Holy Spirit: “It is a glowing breath which penetrates, dilates, pacifies, clarifies and places in state of suspension, order and clear visibility the various faculties of our nature, allowing nothing to resist its divine cause.”
On February 12, Christianity witnessed the ‘glowing breath’ of a historic first encounter between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill. The encounter marked a fresh stage in relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and a sign of hope for all people of good will. “It was a conversation between brothers,” said Pope Francis. He felt “an inner joy that came from the Lord”.
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