Robert Barron - Three Questions to Ask Yourself During Lent
Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the holy season of Lent. I don’t know if you’re like me, but gosh, how many Lents have I lived through? And when I come to the end of most Lents, I say, «Gosh, I probably could have done that better. That probably could have been a richer spiritual experience». But okay, the Church, once again, the year rolls around, it gives us another opportunity to live this holy season well. I always think of Blaise Pascal when I begin Lent. Pascal’s the one that said, «Most of us go through life diverting ourselves». He uses, in his French, divertissement, we have diversions, and it’s all the different forms of play and distraction that we use so that we don’t come to terms with the big questions.
Pascal said, «Look, we all have to deal with God, meaning, purpose, what’s my life all about, my own sin, eternal life, heaven, hell, purgatory, salvation, the big questions». But what most of us do is those questions come to mind and we say, «Okay, that’s too much for me right now,» or «I can’t really deal with that, so I’m going to divert myself with games and play and my work or whatever it is». «What we have to do», Pascal said, «was take the time sitting quietly in your own room by yourself to deal with, confront, face these great questions».
I think Lent is precisely that time for us Catholics, it’s precisely the time to let the diversions go and look hard and long at the great questions. One thing I’m going to do, I’ve resolved this Lent, is I’m going to take my cell phone and put it in a drawer one day a week, (a) to get away from the addiction to it. I think we all get addicted to these things, but also it’s such a source of distraction. It’s a perfect example of the divertissement that Pascal talks about. Like, oh, I won’t think about God and eternal life; I’ll look at my stupid feed on the phone. So I’m going to try, one day a week, to just put that phone in a drawer for an entire day.
Can I urge you to do the same thing? Maybe find something that is really distracting you from the serious questions and fast from it this Lent. Now, the first Gospel we get for this Sunday is Luke’s marvelous account of a temptation of Jesus, and again, and we’ve heard this a thousand times, but to move into the spiritual space of this reading is very important for Lent. What happens when Jesus goes into the desert for 40 days? Well, indeed, he leaves the divertissement aside. Indeed, he’s going to look long and hard at these deep spiritual realities, but something else is going to go on, and you can find this, gosh, across all the cultures in different ways, especially in the initiation rituals of young men, is they’re forced to come to terms with certain limits.
You know, without food and without means of self-defense and to survive in hostile situations. What that does is it brings you to a kind of edge, it brings you to a limit experience, and you come to terms with your weakness, with your temptation, with your fears, and that’s essential if you’re going to make the move into maturity. Well, there’s something like that going on here, is the Lord is going to come to terms with three great temptations. Temptations to do what? To become not the person that God wants you to be. That’s always the question; that’s always the great issue. Am I becoming the person that God wants me to be, or am I being tempted in some other direction?
Jesus, of course, without giving in to the temptation, he’s not a sinner, but he feels the temptations that we feel, away from the path we ought to be on. So it’s really good for us as Lent commences for us to look at these. So here’s the first one. «He ate nothing in those days, and when they were over he was hungry. The devil said to him, ‘If you’re the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’» What’s the first temptation away from the path that God wants for us? The first temptation, I would call it, is comfort. «Turn these stones into bread».
And he’s starving; of course he wants to eat, and a beautiful, delicious loaf of bread, what could be more enticing? Food and drink, comfort, sensual pleasure, all of it. Good in itself? Yes. As I’ve said to you many, many times, Catholics are not Puritans, we love the goods of this world, we love food, and drink, and sex, and there’s nothing at all wrong with those things, but when they become the summum bonum, the highest good, they become the North Star of your life. Now, you’re tempted away perhaps from the path that God wants you to take. Wasn’t it Joseph Ratzinger who said, «Yeah, but we’re not made for comfort, we’re made for greatness». Right. We’re made to be, listen now, conduits of the divine grace into the world; that’s our task.
Now, it’ll take a million different forms, it’ll be as unique as each individual, but the basic form is always the same: to be a conduit of the divine grace into the world. But see, if I say my life is about comfort, then I’m not going to find that path, I am not going to be a conduit of the divine life. I think here of the great Tolkien, and Bilbo, and Frodo. And before Bilbo leaves on his great adventure in «The Hobbit,» he has to be drawn out of that really comfy, cozy hobbit hole that he lives in. Revisit the movies if you want to see this vividly displayed or dig out «The Hobbit».
It’s this lovely little cozy, warm, comfortable place where he lives, and he’s a good little soul and nothing morally wrong with him, but he’s living a comfortable life. If that’s what it’s all about, you’re never going to become the person God wants you to be. And so that first temptation, comfort, ease, sensual pleasure, has to be resisted. So the Lord says, «Look, we don’t live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God». That’s it. We do live on bread, that’s part of it, but not bread alone. The higher life is coming from a higher source. Okay, temptation number two. «Then he», the devil, «took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, ‘I shall give to you all this power and glory if you worship me.’»
Okay. Is power a bad in itself? No. Very good people can exercise power for good reason. God is described as all powerful, so it can’t be bad in itself. But can power be a very dangerous temptation away from the path God wants us to walk? You bet. Again, Tolkien: What’s the Ring? What’s the Ring that bedevils everybody in that story, the source of all mischief? It’s a Ring precisely of power. That’s what they want. There are a lot of people, they can eschew sensual pleasure and comfort, that’s not their hang-up, but they are massively attracted to power.
Now, this can be on the grandest geopolitical scale, but every one of us are tempted to exercise power. St.Augustine describes sin as the libido dominandi. It’s Latin for the «lust to dominate,» and again, I submit to you everybody, it’s in little kids, you can see it, and it’s in the highest figures on the political scene. The lust to dominate is a very powerful temptation. But see, maybe God is calling you to be a conduit of his love in a very weak and powerless way. Maybe he wants you to take a very humble path. Maybe it is all kinds of people that have power over you.
Look at the Lord himself. At the climax of his life, he has no power whatsoever. He’s handed over to those who arrest him, he’s handed over to the Sanhedrin, handed over to Pontius Pilate, handed over to the executioners, who hand him over to death. At the end, and he’s nailed to a cross, he’s denuded of all power. But he’s walking the divine path. The second great temptation: Are we lured by power in all of its manifestations? If you are, you’re not going to find the path that God wants you to have. Now, listen, maybe God will put you in a powerful position, okay, fair enough.
As long as now you’re using that power for God’s purposes, not your own. See, that’s the key. Notice from the devil, who says to me, «I’ll give you all these kingdoms if you but worship me». No, no, you worship God alone. God alone is the summum bonum. That’s the point. If you make power the summum bonum, you are ipso facto, I’m speaking a lot of Latin here, worshipping the devil. I’ve often said to you: What you worship determines everything else in your life. Are you worshipping your own comfort, worshipping your own power? Then you’re on the wrong path. Okay, last temptation. «Then he led him», he, the devil, «led him to Jerusalem, made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you’re the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it’s written: he will command his angels to guard you.’»
Now, this one I think is interesting. It’s more subtle in a way. The first two are kind of straightforward, the sensual pleasure, comfort, and power, and we know what those things are like, those temptations. What’s this temptation exactly? Well, it’s to use God for your own purposes. Here I am, I’m on the parapet of the temple, I’m the king of the world, I’m going to throw myself down, and I’m going to compel God to protect me. This is someone who’s trying to use and manipulate God. Listen now, rather than becoming the servant of God, I say it’s subtle because this is the sin of pride. This is what the spiritual masters recognize as the capital sin. What’s pride but making myself into the center of the universe? My ego becoming a black hole that draws all things and all light into itself, including God.
Now, you say, «Well, I never do that». No, no, whenever you say, «Lord, why aren’t you doing things to help me here? Why aren’t things working out my way? I pray and pray and pray, but you don’t do what I want». You see, what that is is a temptation of God; it’s a manipulation of God. No, no, the game is not getting God to do what I want; the game is surrendering to God’s purposes, yes, even when I don’t fully understand them. Move, if you will, if you dare, into the human nature of Jesus on the cross in his human mind saying, «God, my God, why have you abandoned me»?
Well, that’s the feeling we’re talking about. But of course, what do we find in Jesus? Not a desire to manipulate God but a surrender to God’s purposes and God’s will, not his own. «Your will be done, not mine,» he says in the Garden of Gethsemane. Okay, so everybody’s Lent commences, the desert, the time where we leave the divertissement aside, the diversions. We come to terms with these great questions, and among them are: What are the three classical paths that are leading me away from God? To what degree has comfort become too important to me? To what degree has power and the libido dominandi become too important for me? To what degree am I trying to manipulate God for my purposes rather than surrendering to his purposes? Let’s all spend a lot of these next 40 days wrestling with those questions. And God bless you.