The Temptation of Christ in the desert represents Our Lord’s first victory over Satan.  It’s a vivid scene: Christ, alone in the silent and dreary solitude of the desert, kneeling before his Heavenly Father in fervent prayer, subduing his body with an uninterrupted fast of forty days.  The tempter comes, and tries to poison the well of eternal salvation.  He utterly fails.  The devil suggests, “Break your fast….use your power to serve yourself and your own comfort.”  Our Lord says no, because he has come in power to save the world, not to use it to indulge himself in the comforts of earthly life.  The devil suggests, “Worship me, and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world to reign over.”  Our Lord says no, because he has come in power to give glory to his Heavenly Father, not to amass world domination for himself.  The devil suggests, “Throw yourself off this cliff to show off your power and impress everyone with your angelic protectors.”  Our Lord says no, because he has come with power that shines forth in humility, not in glamour and thrills, and certainly not for some cheap magic trick. 

This is Christ’s first victory over Satan: it will not be his last.  But we see a small shadow, here in the desert, of the final definitive victory that Our Lord will win over sin and death.  We begin to see what Christ is truly here for: we see him suffering and denying himself, enduring trials and temptations for our sake.  In this moment, we catch our first glimpse of the Holy Cross.  And already, Christ triumphs.  Our Lord invites us on a strange kind of journey with him: he invites us, out of love, to join him in the desert, to join him in self-denial, through this holy season of Lent which we’ve begun.  He invites us to join him for penance and for purification: not out of some perverse desire for suffering: but because we need this.  Because we need a regular dose of the dry heat of the desert to burn away our complacency and our obsessive love of comfort.  We need to be immersed regularly in the cleansing waters of grace, to wash away the dust that clings to us from the hazardous road that we walk.  And so the Lord offers us this great season of Lent as a way of drawing closer to him in the desert.  We join him and follow his example in prayer and in fasting, and in almsgiving: generous giving of ourselves.  God is giving us the grace to draw closer and closer to him in this time, to meet him in the desert.  Let us take up our cross and follow him, follow him through the desert, follow him all the way to our salvation.