I hope that everyone had their fair share of pancakes yesterday. Sadly, I didn’t even eat one: I spent my morning at Service Ontario and my evening at work. You might say that I was getting a head start on my Lenten penance, which actually began earlier today on this Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting and abstinence. It’s also the easiest day to spot a Catholic because they’ll be walking around with a cross marked using ashes on their foreheads (unless they receive the ashes the “European way,” which involves them being sprinkled on their head). The running joke is that if there are any good Catholic men out there looking for a good Catholic girl, today God will label them for you; and vice versa, of course. However, what is most important is that this day marks the beginning of Lent, which is the liturgical season that prepares us for Easter.

It’s tempting to think about Lent sort of like the paperwork one does before they go bungie-jumping: for some, it’s just the dry, boring stuff that they need to get out of the way before they get to experience some real fun. After all, Lent is typically associated with giving stuff up, asceticism, and all the aesthetic of the desert that it (spiritually) represents. That is, of course, why Lent is 40 days long (excluding Sundays, which are never days of fasting or abstinence): it is a commemoration of Jesus’s forty days in the desert when he was tempted by Satan (cf. Matthew 4:1–11, Mark 1:12–13, Luke 4:1–13).

What’s so interesting about deserts? They are barren. There’s hardly anything in them. They seem to stretch on for thousands of miles without end. They’re quiet—even more so than a lot of nature—because generally deserts are considered hostile to life. In the desert, we are challenged to go without our usual comforts: I, for instance, have never truly known thirst or hunger because I can always pop over to the store or drink some water from the tap if I had the inclination. The desert affords no such luxury. Hence why, in the picture shown above, we see Christ sitting tiredly on a rock looking perhaps a little bit frail. But of course, we know he’s not.

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word … of God.

—Jesus (Matt. 4:4)

Despite what was likely a trying physical experience, Christ has the spirit to rebuke Satan’s temptations. While it may be true that Jesus had a “genetic advantage” that allowed him to live more ascetically, let it not be said that he did not undergo suffering. In the words of St Athanasius:

Yes, he hungered because of the property of his body, but he did not perish of starvation, because of the Lord wearing it.

Athanasius, De Incarnatione sect. xxi

As people are supposed to be imitators of Christ (cf. Ephesians 5:1), what I think this story teaches us—and what we can experience through the “desert” of Lent—is that the spirit can persist even when the body is failing. That is to say, the asceticism of Lent is not meant to make you feel bad: rather, it is intended to strip away the excess, to bring you a bit closer to that desert, because in that desert you find your spirit tested and give it a chance to grow. After all, how can one get any stronger if they don’t exercise?

This is not an easy experience of course, but is necessary because without any mortification of the will, one is simply a slave to their own desires. That is not true freedom, and without freedom, one hardly lives at all. As such, the desert is not somewhere hostile to life—quite the contrary! In fact, the desert gives us a chance to be shaped by a unique encounter that can only take place when the perishable is stripped away; and it is through this encounter with God that we might find everlasting life and the true freedom it comes with.