When Our Lord was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, it was not merely to endure hunger or solitude, as though sanctity were a matter of stoic self-denial. No, He went as a gladiator going into the Coliseum. The encounter with the devil was not an unfortunate interruption of His ministry; it was its opening engagement of hand-to-hand combat. Before He preached to crowds or healed the sick, He faced our ancient enemy on ground chosen by Divine Providence.

We are much mistaken if we imagine the temptation in the desert to have been a private moral struggle, like a man wrestling with a troublesome habit. It was, rather, the clash of two kingdoms. The devil, that parasite of God’s good creation, could offer nothing truly his own – only distortions of what the Father already delights to give. Bread without obedience. Power without suffering. Glory without the Cross. In each temptation there lies the same hissed suggestion: “Take the crown, and leave the thorns.”

Here, then, is the great comfort and the great terror of Lent: we are not fighting alone, but we are truly fighting. The same enemy who dared to whisper to Christ will not scruple to whisper to us. The spiritual battle of Lent is not fought with grand gestures, but with small obediences. We fast, and discover how much of our supposed “need” is but appetite masquerading as necessity. We pray, and find how quickly our minds stray. We give alms, and feel the resistance of self-love. In each act we stand, in our measure, beside Christ in the desert, answering the tempter not with cleverness, but with trust.

The devil’s stratagem has always been to persuade us that God is withholding something essential, that obedience will diminish us, that surrender will impoverish us. Yet in the desert we see the opposite. It is precisely in refusing the shortcut that Christ prepares the true victory. What seems like deprivation becomes preparation; what feels like hunger becomes strength.

And so Lent is no mere annual exercise in religious gloom. It is training for joy. We strip away the lesser loves, not because they are evil in themselves, but because they so easily become rivals to the Greatest Love. We learn that man does not live by bread alone, and that the Kingdom cannot be seized but must be received.

Thus Lent is the Church’s campaign season. We march not toward despair, but toward Easter. The wilderness is not our destination; it is our battleground. And because He has fought there before us—and triumphed—we may take courage. The devil’s promises glitter; Christ’s promises endure. In the end, it is not the tempter who has the last word, but the One who answered him and overcame.