The temptation narrative in the Gospel on this first Sunday of Lent, coupled with the other temptation in the Garden of Eden, sets the tone for this very important season. The Gospel account is Matthew's attempt to identify Jesus before the beginning of his public ministry. Jesus' recollection in the wilderness is inevitably an inner struggle for fidelity to the task ahead, a struggle against all the distortions of that task.

Matthew further seeks to connect Jesus' experience with that of Israel. The three biblical references attributed to Jesus in today's Gospel are found in the Book of Deuteronomy (chapters 6-8). In those chapters, Moses addresses the people of Israel towards the end of their wandering in the wilderness and before they enter in the Promised Land. The covenant relationship between God and Israel is the underlying motif of those chapters.

In the wilderness, Israel failed the test; Jesus accepts to undertake God's test, refuses to test God, and passes the test because he is no ordinary human being, but the Way that leads us across the desert to salvation.

In Jesus Christ, through whom "divine grace came to so many as an abundant free gift" (St Paul), we all have the possibility and capacity to transcend the limitations of sin and the handicap of our very human way of seeing things. In Christ we have the affirmation of our capacity to resist all temptation that distorts our true being and makes us dream only in terms of an earthly paradise.

For the early ascetics, the desert was a place of trial and temptation, just as it proves to be for the Israelites and for Jesus. There they found their inner demons exposed: fear and insecurity, anger and violence, self-deception and self-hatred. The monks felt they were engaging with the devil, just as Christ had been. Temptation was inseparable from experience and was a good thing, enabling discernment of spirits and endurance.

So the desert is not just a place of struggle. It is also the place where we can meet our God, where we receive wisdom. While crossing our deserts of life, we discover ourselves as we go through temptations and experience failures. But our call is not just to discover ourselves. That's exactly what Adam and Eve discovered the moment they ran away from their God. And it was a terrible experience; it was the moment they realised they were naked, alone, runaways.

In Genesis, man is already the anti-Christ depicted by the philosopher Soloviev, believing himself self-sufficient and capable of saving himself. Evil fascinates us too much not to think about it.

The themes of desert and temptation are very meaningful metaphors within Christian spiritual tradition that make us explore in depth our own experiences of grief, pain, and struggle.

In a very personal exploration, Belden Lane, in his book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, brings together his own experiences of journeying through wilderness as he journeyed alongside his dying mother through the crisis of cancer and the long wilderness of Alzheimer's.

Even if the term 'spiritual warfare' may sound archaic, it is what most aptly describes our daily life. In Christ, the new Adam, our private anguish can be transformed into prayer and the emptiness of the desert can bring fulfilment.

Worry, tensions, pride, greed, and fear take too much of our time and fill too much of our space. We need a spirit of letting go. We must learn to let go of all that is unnecessary and destructive in ourselves. The most basic question we must deal with this Lent is 'What am I filled with now?'