FAILURE IN THE DESERT

Abba Pachomius said, “When you are free from temptations, when your soul tells you ‘Peace, peace,’ then know you are far from peace. The Master of Life covers the weakness of those who are too feeble to engage in the struggle of Grace. When you are resolute to follow Him, then temptations come. If you seek the King of Glory, you will encounter the master of this world. Then learn the text, “by faith you are saved through Grace, and not of yourself.”—from The Saints of the Desert

Many of us, at the beginning of Lent, can move mountains. Lenten disciplines and resolutions are easily kept; prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the customary practices of Lent, offer us no challenge. We’ve got this aced.

That’s why Lent lasts forty days and forty nights. Five or six days of spiritual discipline is refreshing for almost anybody, even the most hedonistic of people. Actually, a dedicated hedonist might find a week of self-denial the perfect prelude to a fat spate of self-indulgence. The real value of Lent isn’t in the beginning, when we’re fresh, nor the end, as we are on the doorstep of Easter. The virtue—virtus (from the Latin word “strength”)—of Lent is in the dull, plodding middle. Lent does its most effective work on our souls when it gets dull and we get tired of it.

When we’re tired, temptation finds us an easy mark.

After two weeks of keeping a Lenten discipline (if it’s a discipline worth keeping because it challenges you), we get bored with it: tired of the praying, tired of going without, irritated giving away my money. I don’t “feel spiritual” anymore, find myself distracted when I pray (did I forget to turn off the oven?), what good is it doing me not to watch television? Now, you’re keeping Lent! When the grumbling starts, so too does your Lenten contest.

“When you are resolute to follow Him,” St Pachomius forewarns us, “then temptations come.” Scripture tells us the Lord Jesus’ Lenten Fast was a time of temptation: “And He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.” You know the story. The devil tempted the Lord Christ, first with bread, then with power, finally with glory. The Lord, hungry, weak and alone, spurned every temptation.

St Pachomius spent his own time in the desert and lived through his own temptations. He shares the fruit of what he lived and learned with us: “If you seek the King of Glory, you will encounter the master of this world. Then learn the text, ‘by faith you are saved through Grace, and not of yourself.’ ” Temptation, failure and sin: the Christian who seeks to follow his Lord can expect these as his daily fare. It’s obvious Pachomius did. He warns us that if we rely on ourselves, on our own will-power or self-control to address temptations and selfishness, we’ll lose time and time and time again, world without end.

Lenten is not a forty-day seminar on “How to Become a Better, Stronger, More Self-Reliant Person.” Shocking as it may be, it ends up not being about us at all: not our painful abstinences, not our prolonged prayers nor our financial self-sacrifice. Lent is about life; about surrendering yourself to God, and giving yourself to Grace.

“Saved,” the old desert monk reminds us, “through Grace, and not of yourself.”