At Haltime in Lent

Photo by Gavin Spear on Unsplash

And the LORD's anger was kindled against Israel,

and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years,

until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD was consumed.

-Numbers 32:13

Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? And with whom was he provoked forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

-Hebrews 3:12, 16-19

The generation, "that had done evil in the sight of the LORD," had been the oldest generation and the one who had spent the most time in Egypt. Throughout Exodus and Numbers, the members of this generation are the ones constantly complaining to Moses and God about how difficult their plight was and belaboring their regret of ever leaving Egypt in the first place. They usually couched their complaints as concern for the welfare of their children, but it was always clear they were solely concerned for themselves. To prevent their sinful attraction to Egypt from infecting Israel as it established itself in the Promised Land and causing all kinds of discontent and other problems, God allowed His Chosen People to wander in the desert for 40 years until that generation of malcontents had grown old and died.

For us Christians, the Hebrew's journey from Egypt to the Promised Land is analogous to our journey from sin to salvation. In Egypt, the Hebrews worshipped demons and had had everything they wanted. When we live in sin, surrender ourselves to demons and believe we are getting everything we want. In the Promised Land, the Hebrews had become the nation of Israel, the Chosen People of God, and were meant to live in right relationship to God as children to their father. The Promised Land for us is Heaven, when after being washed in the Blood of Jesus Christ, Our Blessed Savior, we will live for eternity as brothers of Christ and co-heirs to the kingdom and step-children of the Father in the Holy Spirit.

What are we as Christians to make of the forty years of wandering? Our 40 years of wandering is right now. Right now God has given us the time and the grace, through the sacramental life of His Church, to rid ourselves of that "generation" inside of us, which longs for the lives of sin we have lived. Unfortunately, we sometimes having been in Egypt and complain about the desert ourselves. Our attachments to our past sins, the way in which we miss being immersed in them, will lead us to fall away from the living God. Our lives, our time in the desert, are meant to be spent getting Egypt out of our lives and our hearts. In no way can we love God fully, while we still love our past sinful ways. "'You cannot serve God and mammon'" (Luke 16:13). If we die, while still loving our sins or those temporal goods, which distract us from a full-hearted commitment to God, then we risk being left in the desert. Understanding our lives as this wondrous gift from God, a gift which allows us to journey to Him, to sanctity, and, eventually, to Heaven, gives our lives a meaning and a gravity not easily expressed or taken for granted. From this perspective, our lives, then, become the time during which God purifies and divinizes us through His Son's Blood shed on the cross. By the unimaginable grace of God, the desert now brings us Life through the death of our old selves. How great is God?

Right now, we are in the middle of the 40 days of Lent. These 40 days are meant to draw our reflections to the sinful ingratitude of the oldest generation of Hebrews in the desert and its result. Our reflections upon their demise in that desert can aid us in renewing our resolve to spend Lent much more intensely shedding ourselves of our love for our old sins and focusing our love and attention upon the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Blessed Savior, Jesus Christ. To what are we drawn? Then spend the remainder of this Lent denying ourselves of that. What do we miss about our old lives? Then spend this Lent praying for healing and for an increase in the virtues, which oppose those vices. God loves you. Take this Lent to allow Him to love you. Let go of your past and embrace Him.