Once again the Church with her liturgical rhythm asks us to resume the road of the desert. As a contemporary Benedictine monk explains: “The desert towards which the Spirit pushes Jesus does not have a particular name, it does not correspond to a geographical place, it is the desert and that’s it, that is to say the interior of ourselves. This inner place that is an anatomical part of the spiritual man and that many ignore out of fear, or lack of exercise. Because this part of our humanity is special about the fact that it atrophies if we do not take care of it and, instead, it becomes immense to the extent that we inhabit it”. The text of Deuteronomy – set in the spring liturgy of the first fruits and traditionally called the small creed – summarizes Israel’s faith around three poles: the vocation and itinerancy of the patriarchs, the gift of freedom after the bitter slavery of Egypt, the gift of a land in which to cultivate and grow the gifts received. It is not enough to profess with the mouth, it is necessary to believe with the heart where the concrete choices of life are made. To say that Jesus is Lord means to enter into his logic of rejection of any compromise and adjustment with the temptation that, for Luke, reaches his own in Jerusalem. Here the devil seems to give an appointment to Jesus for the moment set: that of his passion in which it is revealed to what extent trust in the Father love for humanity can lead. With the readings of this first stage of our Lenten journey things are clear: do we want to go up with Jesus and like the humiliated Messiah in Jerusalem?

Commentary by b. Michael David, osb Community of the Koinonia de la Visitation

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves, Prinknash Abbey