Lent is often seen as a period of self-denial and mortification. Today, Richard Young challenges us to reframe our view of Lent, instead seeing it as a time of transformation, growth, and encounter.

February 22, 2026: First Sunday of Lent, Year A
Genesis 2:7–9; 3:1–7
Psalm 51:3–6, 12–13, 17
Romans 5:12–19
Matthew 4:1–11

Tough Blessings

A reflection by Richard Young

Every year on the first Sunday of Lent, we hear some version of Jesus’ temptations in the desert. This year we hear Matthew’s account, which is contrasted with the story of the temptation in the Garden of Eden. What’s presented to us is obvious: Jesus is seen as a “new Adam” – one who “got it right” when faced with the Devil’s tricks. Unlike the old Adam, Jesus does not get conned. He obeys God and does not let ego get in the way of his mission.

This is the traditional message we get every year at the start of Lent – that we, like Jesus, are embarking on forty days in the spiritual wilderness to get it right ourselves. We are to be in our own desert to “struggle against evil,” “resist temptation,” and “correct our faults.” That’s what traditional Ash Wednesday prayers say, although there are some less depressing messages in those prayers, even one that calls Lent a “joyful season.” But most of the focus to which we have all traditionally been subjected has been anything but joyful. Lent has, it seems, always been understood to be about self-denial, self-discipline, and sorrow for sin. The self-denial part typically means giving up even healthy pleasures.

Some of us have been trained to look at Lent, if we do it “right,” as a kind of yearly spiritual boot camp, during which we enter into serious prayer – begging for divine mercy. We’ve all had enough of this fall/redemption thinking, especially those of us whom some church officials still call “intrinsically disordered.” I’m reminded of a woman who was a client of mine many years ago in a public mental health agency. She suffered from severe depression. She was so beaten down by this kind of talk in church and from her family that she could barely acknowledge anything good about herself. Compliments were actually painful for her. I remember her so well, because she got much better eventually – no thanks to her church and its shaming words.

Alternative faith communities that are part of DignityUSA have always encouraged embracing this season of renewal with creative thinking. We accept that the Adam and Eve story is just that – a story, meant to teach us something, not an historical reality – a story open to creative interpretation. Because of that, we can question the very theology that calls Jesus a “new Adam.” We can question the thinking that he had to “get it right” in his encounter with the devil and erase the “stain” of Adam’s sin. We can question the idea that, because of Adam, we are also flawed from the start. In other words, we don’t have to undo any misstep Adam made with the Devil. Neither did Jesus. That’s because of our original innocence and because Adam was a fictional character in the first place. The Adam and Eve story has value, of course, as a commentary on human nature. It contains truth in that sense. It reminds us that people sometimes choose to disobey their godly instincts in favor of selfish ends. The lure of power and wealth sometimes supersedes our more honorable intentions. That’s part of the moral of the story.

The Adam and Eve tale tells us how some people are just never satisfied. Humankind all started, the myth says, with two people in a magnificent garden, surrounded by everything they could possibly want. The Almighty had given them copious supplies of luscious food, spectacular natural beauty, and safety. They could take it easy, relax, and enjoy it all. All they had was ONE TINY, SIMPLE, LITTLE RULE to obey, just one: Don’t touch that one tree! That’s all! Nothing complex. They didn’t need a team of lawyers to interpret that edict. God didn’t ask anything else of them at all! Nothing! So what did they do? They touched that darned tree! The snake conned them into thinking they would be like God, if they did it. But the truth was, they were already made in the divine image and likeness. We’re already like God. The result, the story goes, is that they lost their innocence. They realized they were naked, and shame came into the world. They lost their connection with their God-given goodness.

Some interpreters of this story would have us believe that there is some kind of design flaw within us – that God made a mistake in making us, that because each of us always eventually chooses to be selfish, we need to get “fixed” every Lent, like a tune-up for your car. Our reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans reinforces this unfortunate thinking. It is his basic redemption theory. It contrasts Adam’s “single offense” with the “single righteous act” by Jesus. It compares the “disobedience” of Adam with the “obedience” of Jesus, and it leads to the idea that we are all born with the curse of our first parents’ sin, until it is “washed away” in baptism. But how can we be made in God’s “image and likeness” and at the same time be an inheritor of Adam’s “condemnation?”

I think it is best to set aside this theory and conceive of our Lenten days as having the same potential for personal and communal transformation as Jesus’ time in the desert. For him, it led to a greater sense of himself as a servant of God, a healer, a truth-teller, a challenger of the powerful. It fine-tuned his values such that the Reign of God became for him far greater than what the devil was offering: “all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence.” The desert can do the same for us.

Of course, dealing with our shortcomings has its place in the wilderness, but the desert is much more than that. It is a place that fosters change – an incubator, as it were, from which dreamers and visionaries, such as Jesus, can emerge and transform a broken world. Yes, it can be tough in the desert, but only so that you can find your authentic self, your nobility, the God within. It isn’t a place of self-shaming, self-flagellation, and mortification of the flesh. It is a place to radically love all that you are, so that it can grow and transform into the powerful prophet you’ve been called to be. The desert is a place of tough blessings where you can get deadly serious about ministry, about what God wants from you, and about what your siblings in Christ need from you. Jesus, the story says, went there before his public ministry. To get real about our own ministry, we go to a kind of inner desert every year at this time, not so much because of our imperfections, but because the transformation that only a desert can give is a truly good thing for everyone.

That lady I mentioned earlier got better largely because I wouldn’t let her live in the past, the place of regrets, the mistakes, the sins that were over and done with. What was the point of hanging around there? Instead, I worked to keep her in the desert of transformation. I noted earlier that compliments were actually painful for her. She was so unaccustomed to them! But I made it a point to affirm every good thing I could about her. I did so in order to break down her denial about her already being like God, even if it was difficult for her to hear. That was her desert, her place of tough blessings. Session after session, as difficult as it was to be affirmed, she came back, and she was changed. She learned how beautiful she was.

Lent can be hard, not so much because we might have devilish encounters, but because we might have godly ones that transform us more than we could possibly imagine. May we be open to them in this holy season.

Rev. Richard P. Young is a retired Catholic priest and mental health counselor.  He regularly presides and preaches at liturgies for Dignity/Dayton’s Living Beatitudes Community and has worked with several Dignity Chapters since the late 70s.  He once served for a term on the national board of DignityUSA and has attended all the national conventions/conferences since 1981.  He is married to former DignityUSA national secretary, Bob Butts.  Richard was honored with a President’s Award at the 2022 Dignity National Conference in San Diego and was the homilist for the liturgy at the 2025 conference in Dublin, Ohio.