And a voice came from the heavens, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”” (Mt 3,17) The Voice. The Voice of the Father. After his baptism, Jesus hears distinctly a voice that comes from the heavens, it is a voice that he recognizes but that he has not yet completely identified. It is a voice that has been deep within him his whole life, a voice that had lead him and guided him and helped him to grow in wisdom and understanding among the confusion of life’s myriad events. It is the Voice of an Other, and yet it is mysteriously at the same time his own voice. The Voice knew him, more deeply than any other, even his mother Mary and his father Joseph, more deeply than he knew himself. The Voice of the Father identified him as “the Son” and communicated deep and eternal love. Jesus knew that the Voice carried the Truth and revealed an ancient Truth that had existed even before time began. It was a Voice that spoke the Word of Creation and Life itself. That Voice and the Word that it spoke was echoed in every thing that had being and existence.

After the Voice had spoken, Jesus felt the presence of an Other that was not the Voice or the Word but was more silence than speech. It was a Breath that carried the Truth to the deepest depth of his interior being and moved him to act upon the Truth and be transformed, like fire, consuming his entire being. The Breath breathed Life and Love into his human heart and was sweet and it caused a deep longing in his heart to hear and listen to the Voice of the Father again. It was the Breath that promised a union, a oneness with the Voice of the Father, now living in the heart of the Son. The Breath of the Spirit moved him, like a driving wind, into the wilderness of solitude and silence so that he might be alone with the Voice and listen intently to the Word that it spoke into his heart.

For forty days and forty nights Jesus listened to the Voice of the Father, carried on the Breath of the Spirit. For forty days and forty nights, Jesus drank in the Word of the Father and was nourished on that Word. He lived and breathed the Word and was transformed by the Word. He had no need of earthly food or drink because the Word of the Father gave him life, like nothing that he had ever humanly experienced before. For forty days and forty nights, he rested in the Word of the Father and in the Spirit of Love that it conveyed. After forty days and forty nights Jesus was filled with the Presence of the Father and the Spirit and he knew a joy and freedom that he had not yet experienced in his earthly sojourn. Now he was ready to proclaim the Word to the world but first he must hear another voice. The voice of the Satan.

After forty days and forty nights in the Presence, now Jesus experiences only an absence. A silence descends upon the desert but not the sweet silence and gentle breeze of the Breath of the Spirit but an emptiness, devoid of Love and Truth and filled with shadows and dryness. He experiences the wilderness now as a place with no life, no nourishment, no water, a place of loneliness that threatens his very existence as the Son and challenges everything that he knows about life. The Satan, the tempter, approaches him and speaks his words. These words, unlike the Word of the Father, do not nourish with the Truth, they are words of illusion and deception, they empty and confuse. The voice he hears now speaks only lies for it comes from the Father of lies. Satan unsheathes his greatest weapon, doubt. The words of doubt are unleashed and they search for any human weakness that Jesus might have in his human nature. “If you are the Son of God…” With these words of dissimilation, Satan puts the Word of God to the test. Satan, the adversary and the accuser, spreads his temptations and false promises before Jesus. He does everything in his power to divide the heart of Jesus and separate him from the Father and the Spirit. Satan does not acknowledge him as a Person-in-Communion but entices him to be an individual, autonomous and acting on his own authority.

The grace of the forty days and forty nights in the Presence of the Father strengthens Jesus, and with the Word of Truth as his shield, Jesus renounces and rebukes each of Satan’s lies and empty promises, and then even Satan himself. The devil leaves him and “behold, angels came and ministered to him.” (Mt 4,11) The forty days of Lent are a time of grace for the “children of God” to be led by the Spirt into the desert to listen to the Voice of the Father, to be nourished by his Word, to learn discipline and to grow strong in his Love. They prepare us for the spiritual assaults of the Satan and allow us to be able to renounce and rebuke his temptations, lies and empty promises. It is a time to pray, to fast and to experience solidarity with our brothers and sisters in charity. May these forty days help us all to grow strong in Spirit, in Truth, in Faith, in Love and be celebrated by the angels.