Jesus today in the Gospel talks about one of the most mysterious and misunderstood Christian doctrines -- hell.

Jesus tells us simply -- never stop praying!

You can sum up all of Salvation History as God's attempt to prove to humanity one simple fact -- that He is good.

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.

When you look at the eyes of Our Lord, what do you see?

Lent is the holy season by which we willingly choose weakness over strength, pain over comfort, and the love of Jesus over my own will.

Lent is upon us! In this holy season, the Church asks us to purposely become weak.

With the approach of Ash Wednesday on February 18th, the Church once again does something both startling and merciful: she reminds us that we shall die.

There is about this reminder a bracing honesty which our modern age sorely needs. We are encouraged, most days, to behave as though we were permanent fixtures in a very temporary world. We speak of plans and prospects, of improvements and entertainments, and seldom of endings. Yet on Ash Wednesday the priest marks our foreheads with ashes and speaks the plain truth: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is not cruelty. It is clarity. And clarity, in the hands of God, is always a form of kindness.

Lent, then, is not a season for religious theatrics, but for reality. The Church calls us to consider the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell—not because she delights in severity, but because she desires our joy.

Death is the great appointment we all keep. It is not an interruption of the story, but its turning page. For the Christian, death is not the collapse of meaning but its unveiling. The One we have trusted in shadows we shall meet face to face. To remember death is not to become morbid; it is to become wise. Only when we grasp that our days are numbered do we begin to truly live.

Judgment, too, has been misunderstood. We imagine a cold tribunal and forget that judgment is the setting right of what has gone wrong. Every time we cry out against injustice, every time we long for truth to prevail, we are secretly longing for judgment. And the Judge is not a stranger but the very Christ who bore our sins. To stand before Him will be to stand before Love itself; it’s a love that burns away falsehood and heals what we have surrendered to Him.

Heaven and Hell stand as the two great possibilities before every human soul. Heaven is not a sentimental cloud, but the solid, blazing reality for which we were made. It is the fulfillment of every pure desire, the answer to every homesick ache we have ever felt in this world. Hell, on the other hand, is not so much a torture devised by God as the final monument to human refusal, the tragic end of a will that persistently says, “I will have my own way.” In the end, we are given what we have chosen.

Lent is the season in which we are invited to choose again.

Through prayer, we learn to desire God above lesser things. Through fasting, we discover how tightly we cling to what cannot save us. Through repentance, we unlock doors we have long kept barred. The ashes on our foreheads are not a sign of despair but of hope, hope that even dust may be raised to glory. As February 18th draws near, we would do well not to rush past it. Let us receive the ashes. Let us ponder the Last Things. Let us allow eternity to cast its searching and saving light upon our present lives.

For it is only in remembering that we shall die that we truly learn how to live. Only in facing judgment that we begin, at last, to desire Heaven.