Living Jesus' Fasting in the Desert and His Passion

With the public celebration of Mass suspended during this time of the coronavirus public health crisis, how else might we and our families keep the mysteries of Holy Week and joy of Easter alive given these social distancing restrictions and the call by public leaders that we stay at home as much as possible?

Well, our Lenten journey is meant to draw us closer to the Lord in a special way as we approach Holy Week and the Easter Triduum. This year is no exception. While this Holy Week we are unable to come together to celebrate Mass, still this time has offered us a couple of particular ways to join with Jesus precisely in that pain and distress we feel. It is the Gospel of redemptive sacrifice.

At the beginning of Lent, we fasted and recalled how before He began His ministry, He went out into the desert for 40 days, fasting and praying in that emptiness of the wilderness. This recalls too how the Israelites had wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until that blessed day that they crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. At the end of Lent on Good Friday, we again fast as we meditate upon the suffering and crucifixion of our Lord, followed by the still emptiness in the world as His dead body lies in the tomb on Holy Saturday.

This year, we have not only remembered Jesus’ 40 days in the desert and the Passion, we have in a sense lived them with a fast far greater than going without a meal or two. As we endured with Christ His deprivation in the wilderness – His “quarantine,” for that word is derived from the Latin meaning “forty” – so too this Holy Week, perhaps we might join our sufferings to those of Jesus in His Passion: taking upon ourselves the feeling of being abandoned as the Apostles ran away, taking upon ourselves this Cross of social distancing imposed on us like Simon the Cyrenian, feeling the agony of the nails and thorns that Jesus endured and are now being experienced by those afflicted by this horrible disease, and thirsting on the Cross.

In this way, by offering up our miseries to the Lord, in giving to Him our suffering as we take upon ourselves His suffering in our very own personal lives, even from our homes, this Holy Week takes on a whole new meaning – by joining with Him, we participate in the work of salvation.

“Every man has his own share in the Redemption,” wrote St. John Paul II. “In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ” (Salvifici Doloris, 19). Indeed, St. Paul rejoiced in his own sufferings, saying, “In my flesh, I complete what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the Church” (Colossians. 1:24).

These past weeks have been a trial and tribulation for the Christian faithful and the whole world unlike any we have experienced in our memory. It is the fervent hope and prayer of us all that we can return to our lives and jobs and the public celebration of the liturgy as quickly as possible. But this much we can be certain about – the Easter of our personal and social life will come. It might not coincide precisely with the calendar this year, but dawn will break. A new day in the rising of the glorious Son in the world cannot be denied.

We who have walked in darkness will see a great light; and we are children of that light (Isaiah 9:1; Ephesians 5:8).