Last week we were in the wilderness with Jesus. He was tempted by the devil. The wilderness is the lonely, vast expanse of emptiness where everything else is stripped away and we can only rely on God. Recall that the devil tempted the Lord by saying, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (Mt. 4:3).
That is the garden-variety temptation in the wilderness: pride. Of course it doesn’t look like pride. If the temptation to pride looked like pride, we’d run in the other direction, because the deadly sin of pride, when we see it for what it truly is, is gruesome. So, the devil inserts some small dose anesthesia into the temptation to lure us along. But we can’t plead complete ignorance. God guides us through His Word and the teaching of the Church. This is why the devil makes temptation look alluring, so that we won’t look away. Temptation looks alluring because of his low dose tranquilizer, pride. By the time the partial sedative wears off, if we have made the temptation our own by our free action, then we have internalized it through sin. And sin wounds us. It fixes nothing. It only doubles down on the hurt.
The temptation is repackaged a thousand ways every day: “Fix it. Command that everything be perfect … get what you want not simply at the push of a button but at the tap of a screen.” The central move of the temptation to pride cannot be hidden, however: “command.” Command that what can’t be will be. Command what cannot happen. Stone cannot become bread. Control cannot become joy. Impatience cannot become peace. Yelling and fighting cannot become peace. But when we give in to the temptation, what does God do? He doesn’t scream and shout. He doesn’t yell and go silent on us. He reaches out. The problem is that one of the effects of sin is that we take the reaching out of God as a threat … to our pride. In the Gospel today, Jesus reaches out even further. He gives us a glimpse of His glory. “ … He was transfigured before them; His face shown like the sun and His clothes became white as light” (Mt. 17:2). Jesus gives light. And not just any light. It is certainly not the artificial spotlight of pride that in the end scorches us. The Light of Christ is the true light. His light endures and goes through the wilderness to summon and call forth everything we thought was lost. His light is so resounding and strong that it becomes a voice. The Greek word used in the Gospel passage for the “voice that came from the cloud” is the root word for light. Light becomes sound. Light becomes words. This Lent, listen for the light. Let the word of God cast away the temptations of the wilderness so that His garden may rise in our hearts. And in our voice. And in our words.
God bless,
Msgr. Brian Bransfield
