Silent Wilderness

Fr Richard Healey offers a reflection on the Lenten season, inviting us to deepen our relationship with God through worship, surrender, and self-examination. He draws on the biblical narratives of Jesus in the wilderness, Moses before the Promised Land, and Abraham’s faith journey, illustrating the transformative power of trust and surrender to God. Emphasising the importance of confessing Jesus as Lord, he reassures us that God’s grace is accessible to all. This Lent, we are encouraged to embrace self-reflection, renew our faith, and experience God’s profound love and blessings.

00:00:00 So once again, we come into this season of lent, this time of giving ourselves more fully and more completely to our God as we offer ourselves, as we we pray for this chance to be captured by the Lord. So we’re told that Jesus goes into the wilderness, that he goes into this place of the desert, a place that no one owns, a place that is not filled with the distractions that we face every day, a chance to really be captured and caught up in the wonder of what God is doing. Just in this moment. We think of this as the moment of the temptations, the testing. But really this is at its heart is the experience of worship. How do we let ourselves be free enough to give our hearts to God. We’re invited in our first reading. Remember, the whole book of Deuteronomy happens narratively. As Moses is there before the River Jordan. It’s there on the other bank now is the Promised Land. Moses himself didn’t get the privilege of passing through the waters to go to the other side, but he’s there.

00:01:24 He’s led the people this far, and he’s giving them these encouragements, these exhortations, and reminding them of the gratitude that they need to cultivate as part of their worship. And part of that is remembering. Part of that is thinking about this story. You know, it’s really crucial for us to be aware of our story, to be aware of the different elements that have made up our lives, the different way that God has been present to us, undoubtedly, first through our own families, as he speaks about the great ancestors in this case of Abraham or Abraham, and then of his descendants, his children, who had nothing. They didn’t have a land, they didn’t have titles. They didn’t have a lot of property. When the Lord invited them, they were simply wandering Syrians, wandering Arameans. They were nomadic people just moving from place to place whenever the seasons would take them. But the Lord had given Abram a promise that I will make you a father of a great nation, in a particular place, in a particular land.

00:02:36 And Abram trusted in the Lord. He put his faith and his hope in the Lord that that would be fulfilled even when there was no sign, no actual indication that any of these things were coming to pass. And so Abraham becomes a great model for us, a great sign and a witness of what our lives can be. If we simply trust in the Lord. Then Paul, in our second reading today, that wonderful passage from his letter to the Romans reminds us how crucial it us it is for us to be involved in our salvation. What we have to do is to confess with our lips to say out loud the saving name of Jesus, to take that name upon our lips, and to confess it with not just our lips, just as a sort of sign of of things that we do, but as a sign of this deeper conviction that lies in the depths of our hearts. This call, this invitation to surrender ourselves to God, to give this grace back to the Lord. And Paul tells us that if that is all we’re able to do simply to take the name of Jesus upon our hearts, upon our lips, and to confess that he is Lord, that’s enough.

00:03:55 That’s all that we need to do, and we shall be saved, he says. For the last line, for anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s the grace and the gift that we have. We don’t have to conform ourselves into a certain image. We don’t have to have achieved a certain quotient in order to be worthy of his grace, that he’s calling us and inviting us into this space of freedom where we can simply acknowledge his grace and his goodness, his life, and that that will be enough. That will be enough for us to experience first salvation. It’s not the end of the story. There’s so much more to the story than that, but it’s the first step along this path. The first step is an act of worship, an act of surrender, an act to say that I can’t do this. I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I’m caught up in temptations, about power, about authority. But in the midst of all of that, if we can simply surrender ourselves first and say, Lord, I can’t do all of this, I don’t understand what’s going on, but I want to make this first act of surrender, and then I know that that will be enough for this first gift of salvation.

00:05:11 The Lord will then do so much more with us once we have surrendered ourselves to him. Once we’ve been freed from the slavery that we find ourselves in, then God can begin to do this miraculous work of of changing us and transforming us into his people. He can begin to love us, and we can begin to be changed by that presence and by the gift of that power. We can begin to experience his presence within our lives. We can begin to have that sense of absolute trust that Jesus has when he’s confronting the accuser, when he knows that even though these lies seem so good, like any marketing kind of campaign, Jesus knows from the depth of his own friendship with his father that he’s able to to say, no, none of those things are true, that I simply have to confess myself and my belief in God, and to really trust in his power, in his mercy, and in his goodness. And that will be enough. As we enter into these 40 days of lent, let’s indeed really ponder our own story, our ponder what fruits we bring to the Lord, whether we are able, with that sense of generosity, to surrender ourselves, to give ourselves to the Lord, to take that chance to renew our confession of faith, to renew our desire to serve the Lord, to renew our desire to be faithful to God, and to continue to give ourselves and our hearts into the wonder of God, knowing that he will and richly bless, that he will fill us with his grace.

00:06:45 He will allow us to experience him and encounter him. So let’s take the chance to go into the wilderness, to find that space within our lives, just to to be in that silence, to find and encounter the Lord. And in that silence, just to again renew our desire and our commitment to confess Jesus, to proclaim our love for him, and to continue our journey of discipleship through these sacred days of lent.