After this year’s extended period of Ordinary Time, Christian believers will soon begin the penitential season of Lent. 

St. Luke tells us that after his baptism, the Lord Jesus was “filled with the Holy Spirit … and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil” (4:1-2). The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the Lord’s time in the desert:

“The Gospels speak of a time of solitude for Jesus in the desert immediately after his baptism by John. Driven by the Spirit into the desert, Jesus remains there for forty days without eating; he lives among wild beasts, and angels minister to him” (538).

By ancient tradition, Lent is observed for 40 days in spiritual observance of these 40 days the Lord Jesus spent in the desert. The Catechism explains: “By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert” (540).

Why was the Lord Jesus sent into the desert? Why not Jerusalem to immediately begin his preaching? Why not Mount Carmel and its fresh springs? Of all the possible places where the Lord could have been sent, why the desert? And why did the Church use the Lord’s time in the desert as the basis of Lent?

The Lord Jesus was led to the desert to remedy two critical moments of rebellion in salvation history. 

In reconciling rebellion, the Lord Jesus shows his love and obedience to the Father. He reveals to us the purpose of his saving mission.

The desert reveals the Lord Jesus as the new Adam. The Catechism explains, “At the end of this time [of fasting] Satan tempts him three times, seeking to compromise his filial attitude toward God. Jesus rebuffs these attacks, which recapitulate the temptations of Adam in Paradise and of Israel in the desert, and the devil leaves him ‘until an opportune time’” (538).

The first Adam chose himself over God. He refused to approach God as his Father. He wrongly saw God as an authority that had to be overthrown. Adam willingly accepted the allure of the Evil One and sinned against his heavenly Father.

The Lord Jesus did the opposite. In spite of his hunger and tiredness, he clung to the Father and remained steadfast in his love and loyalty to him.

The Catechism summarizes, “The evangelists indicate the salvific meaning of this mysterious event: Jesus is the new Adam who remained faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation” (539).

The desert also reveals the Lord Jesus as the new Israel. As God’s people were led through the desert for 40 years, they lamented and complained against God. They had no filial trust or gratitude toward their Heavenly Father.

“Jesus fulfills Israel’s vocation perfectly,” the Catechism explains. “In contrast to those who had once provoked God during forty years in the desert, Christ reveals himself as God’s Servant, totally obedient to the divine will” (539).

By remaining faithful to God, the Lord Jesus “is the devil’s conqueror: He ‘binds the strong man’ to take back his plunder. Jesus’ victory over the tempter in the desert anticipates victory at the Passion, the supreme act of obedience of his filial love for the Father” (539).

The rebellion of humanity is healed by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, the new Adam and the new Israel, and such fidelity is a precursor of the Lord’s Paschal mystery, his passion, death and resurrection, when he will offer himself as a sacrifice and give us the definitive victory.

This is why the Church turns to the desert as the paradigm for Lent. As the Lord’s time in the desert points to the Paschal mystery, so the Lenten season prepares us to celebrate the Paschal mystery and its re-presentation in the liturgy of the sacred Triduum.

With this context in mind, we can see why Lent begins with the rather stark, annual observance of Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, believers are marked and exhorted to die to themselves and live more fully for Jesus Christ, as St. Paul teaches us:

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).

Lent is about the Paschal mystery. It is about each of us joining the Lord Jesus in the desert and deepening our commitment to the path he walked. As such, Lent is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. 

Every believer needs to know the Paschal mystery and why it’s essential to the Christian way of life. This is the purpose of Lent. It’s why we need Lent.

In baptism, we become members of Christ’s own body. We become participants in his passion, death and resurrection. Every day, we are called to undergo a passion, brought about by our own sin, darkness, fear, or anxiety, and to embrace the cross. It is by dying to ourselves on the cross that we show our union with God and our trust in him. It is by the cross that we come to share in the Resurrection. 

With the pace of our world and its multiple distractions, it’s too easy for us to miss the mystery. It’s too easy for us to accept what is comfortable, easy or self-satisfying. We need God’s help to refocus and reorient our lives to the path of sacrificial love. 

Lent is a gift given to us. It demands reflection. It compels us — through various penances and ascetical practices — to choose once again the way of the Lord Jesus.

Lent brings us to a full stop, puts ashes on our foreheads, makes us abstain from meat, calls us to prayer, leads us to the poor, and summons us to ascetical practices. Lent takes our souls and leads them to a renewed focus on Christ. Lent says to us, “The Paschal mystery is what your life is all about. Keep your eye on this mystery.”

The penitential season of Lent is not about us. It is not merely about self-help, or self-improvement, or self-therapy for their own sake. Such things can border on pride or narcissism. No holds barred, Lent is about a deepening in our knowledge and experience of the Suffering, Crucified and Resurrected God who loves us and seeks union with us. 

Lent is about experiencing our souls pining and grasping for God and knowing of our baptismal call to seek him through the self-emptying love of Jesus Christ.

It is for this reason that Lent points us to and prepares us for a devout celebration of Holy Week, in which we liturgically celebrate the very Paschal mystery we have been living in our daily lives. 

Lent helps us to spiritually participate in the liturgies of the Triduum and to say, as we witness the liturgical re-representation of the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection, “Yes, I know this mystery. I’ve lived this mystery — it’s a part of me.” A good Lent, therefore, is all about a good Holy Week. And a good Holy Week is all about union with God and seeking every day the joy of the Resurrection.