As you know, Wednesday next is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. During Lent, the Church withdraws to the desert for forty days in preparation for the celebration of Easter. The desert is a rugged, barren place. It harbours only vultures and wild beasts. Yet, in a spiritual sense, the desert has been the most fertile place on the planet. The three great world religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, were all born in the desert. In this unpromising barren waste, countless men and women from very different cultures discovered an inner richness, a divine dimension to their humanity that had eluded them in the busy world. In the desert too that western monasticism began. History tells us then that the barren desert has been spectacularly productive in a spiritual way.

It is not surprising then that Jesus should prepare for his fatal pilgrimage to Jerusalem by retiring to the desert for forty days. He is re-living in microcosm the experience of his own people. They had wandered aimlessly in the desert for forty odd years. From his experience he would supply the insight that eluded his ancestors. "Man does not live on bread alone." We will be constantly reminded of that too during Lent. While our hunger may be physical, it is not only physical. As Christians we believe that there is a hunger within us that this world cannot satisfy. Put simply, there is more to life than meets the eye. The human being is incomplete, unfinished. In the desert this conviction grew with the greatest intensity. From that conviction of incompletion grew the world great religions. The whole idea of Lent is geared towards each individual capturing to some degree that powerful conviction.

It was James Joyce who said that every dockside is an unfinished bridge, a frustrated bridge. Our physical selves may well be rooted on the quayside, but another dimension looks longingly towards the horizon. How then do we make sense of this incompletion? How do we live here with this unease, this natural frustration, this hereditary insecurity, this unfinished business? Man does not live on bread alone. That is the great refrain of Lent.

The sense of ourselves as unfinished business can have different effects on different people. We look to things that will not so much fill the gap, as make sense of the gap. Some (perhaps all of us to some extent) fill this gap with the friendship and love of other people, be they family or friends or lovers or partners. And this was one of the most consoling revelations of Jesus during the course of his life: that God is mediated to us in this way. However imperfect or flawed other people are, they are in some ways, windows onto God for us. The vision afforded may well be obscured, but it is a vision nonetheless. Other people's reaction to the insecurity within them may not be so benign. They may use their work or their play to distract themselves from their own emptiness, to avert their gaze from the abyss within, as the poet put it. Or, more insidious by far, they may exploit and damage other people in their twisted search for significance. Others of course will disappear down the black hole of addictive oblivion.

As Christians we believe that our completion lies in and with our God. We use religious imagery and symbolism to make sense of ourselves and of this reality. One of the most consistent images or symbols of Lent is that of pilgrimage. Lent specifically commemorates the forty-day pilgrimage of the Lord to the desert. And it was as a pilgrim to Jerusalem that he finally met his death. A Pilgrim is always on the move. Unfinished business comes natural to him. The pilgrim is in search of enlightenment, enlightenment concerning his own emptiness and God's fullness. As long as he keeps these two realities in his sights, he can tolerate his present predicament. He knows that it is folly to settle for security. Even in moments of deep satisfaction he knows that he must move on. The pilgrim is like the homing pigeon: facing towards God, yet distant from God. Lent homes in on our human emptiness. These are the wild beasts that Jesus struggled with. If we follow his way, they will not devour us.

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