by Yohan Wickramasekara
Dear brothers,
Placing ourselves in the presence of the living Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, I hereby draw your attention to the 40 days of desert experience of Christ in preparation for his ministry with fasting and prayer.
My brothers, the desert has always been drawn on as a place of prayer, a place of isolation, a place of divine encounter with God. Still, throughout the New Testament and the Old Testament, the desert became a slot of transition that always challenged all our forefathers with temptations.
In the 40 years of the journey of Israel to the promised land, we see how our forefathers experienced the divine providence by the leadership of Moses, Joshua, and Aaron, in the daytime as a cloud to save them from the sun, in the night time as a pillar of fire to give warmth, manna, water from the rock, the golden serpent as a remedy from the snake bites and more prominently the Ten Commandments that made the Israelites and the whole human race a possession of God to save us from the slavery of sin. Still, most accept the saying God is a jealous God but the fundamental of his possessing us is to allow us to live in our freedom without being a prey of the slavery of sin.
Still the appetite in man, which is in simple terms the greediness of men and women, always made all these Israelites alienated from God. As in Exodus 32 the Golden Calf, Exodus 16 and 17 – the grievance in Massah and Meribah – are the best examples. Still, my dear brothers, this unresolved appetite is running a rat race throughout the world and even in the Church. People are greedy for power, popularity, attention seeking, self-motivated alienation, superiority, and inferiority, and finally, we have lost the true calling behind baptismal discipleship.
Therefore, my brothers, it is the time for us to have an exodus from the unresolved appetite we experienced in the old chapter of our lives during this Lent as these 40 days of preparation must be a point where we identify the grace of the incarnated living Christ in this Blessed Sacrament. Jesus was preparing himself for the ministry.
At his first temptation, he never worked for his hunger, he didn’t turn the stone into the bread, he never struggled for his comfort, he proved that his ministry is not to comfort himself. That is why martyr Blessed Rani Maria says, “we wear a cassock for Jesus not to have them clean symbolizing poverty but to serve his people till the cassock gets fully dirty”.
On his second attempt, he never tested God’s providence. He never wanted to prove his faith to anyone as a trial for someone, but he taught us to live the faith. That is why my brothers, the strongest men and women are not found in the gym or academia, but they are found on their knees in the presence of God.
On his third attempt, he was invited to worship evil to gain the whole world, which is the symbol of power. Today sin is justified. Sin comes in modernism and sin challenges the Church through the sinner, as a sinner, being neglected by the Church with the expectation that the sin would be gratified by the Church. Dear Lord, grant us the courage and wisdom to address these.
Dear brothers, Matthew 11:18-19 says, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
This proves that you can’t lead an ascetic life as a diocesan priest, you must live with people. Still, people would make numerous comments, but your desert experience should be able to leave off the appetite understanding the vanity of what you gain through your appetite (which is simply your greediness). Finally, your appetite will lead you to confusion, the Old Testament symbol serpent, Satan. Brothers, we are called to be extraordinary lovers, since understanding all these, we are invited to love the sheep of God without limitation. Love can climb mountains, climb up the mountain of discipleship, not alone but with others, making them disciples. Finally, you too will realise that you also have climbed up. Love is the goal that must pour from our desert encounter as the ministry we are about to hold is a ministry of love sealed by the body and blood of Christ. As this monstrance holds the incarnated God in the Blessed Sacrament, we too become walking monstrances as we receive the sacrament daily throughout our lives.
My brothers, this love we grow up with throughout this Lent and the formation is not something that can be truly compared and illustrated to the love we perceive in the outer world even though thousands of metaphors and similes are traced. I will affirm this fact with a beautiful piece of instruction given by Bishop Valence Mendis to his priestly candidates, “my dear sons, what we give up as priests and religious is the cause for the conversion of people, therefore live your sacrifice, it will support you to surrender your unconditional love for God and the people of God”.