Christ in the Desert: A Devil of a Time

The Gospel according to St Luke tells the story of Jesus, revealed to be Son of God, led into the desert to be tested by the devil who does not give up easily.

Ash Wednesday, 2026 by Father Gordon MacRae

Many of our readers are aware that the Church follows a three-year cycle for Sunday Scripture Readings. As Ordinary Time now gives way to the Season of Lent, I explore the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent. Being in the “A Cycle,” the Gospel from Saint Matthew (4:1-11) seemed very familiar. Like much of Scripture, I knew that I had read about this passage, but I also felt certain that I had written about it. It is the story of Jesus following the revelation that he is the Son of God revealed at his Baptism in the Jordan. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit to face Satan and a series of temptations for which, if he failed, his redemptive mission would end before it even began. All three of the Synoptic Evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, tell the same story but from different perspectives and traditions. Saint Mark’s version appears in Year B in just three lines of Scriptural text (Mark 1:12-15). The Gospel According to Saint Luke is the most theologically nuanced of the three. So even though in our current cycle, the version from Saint Matthew is used on the First Sunday of Lent, it is very similar to that of Saint Luke. So I have chosen the latter to present in exegesis form for our post this week.

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In my estimation, one of the best movies about Catholic life in America taking a wrong turn has been deemed by some to be a bit rough around the edges. Robert DeNiro portrays Los Angeles Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, and Robert Duvall is cast as his brother, LAPD homicide detective Tom Spellacy in the 1981 film, True Confessions. The film is from a novel of the same name by John Gregory Dunne based on the famous Los Angeles “Black Dahlia” murder case of 1947.

DeNiro’s character, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy is a priest of some prominence in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in the late 1940s at the epicenter of the power politics of a Church beginning to succumb to the world in which it thrives. Amid corruption while being groomed to become the next Archbishop, the Monsignor nonetheless clings to an honest spiritual life just starting its inevitable fraying at the edges as he is drawn ever deeper into a tangled web of deceit.

Robert Duvall portrays his older brother, Tom Spellacy, an honest and dedicated — if somewhat cynical — L.A. homicide detective whose investigation of the murder of a prostitute brings him ever closer to the perimeter of an archdiocese circling the wagons of self preservation. The Church in America would see a lot more of this in the generation to come. Actor Charles Durning portrays the thoroughly corrupt owner of a large construction firm bidding for church building projects. About to be awarded Catholic Layman of the Year by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, he is also a person of interest in the murder investigation that a lot of powerful people want quietly covered up.

Those wanting to influence and sideline Tom’s investigation come up with evidence — a photograph. It depicts the murdered woman in a social scene with a few prominent people, one of whom, standing next to her, is Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, heir apparent of the archdiocesan throne.

The photograph is entirely bening, but it becomes for Tom Spellacy, as it was intended to be, evidence that the Monsignor knew the murdered woman. Many readers would be reminded by this today of the frenzied media fiasco that has been playing out to much fanfare, recriminations, and disgust about the Jeffrey Epstein files and the many lives, some innocent and some not-so-much, who are entangled by a mere photograph in Epstein’s posthumous web of corruption and deceit. In the hands of politicians on the eve of battle in the midtern national elections, such photographs have been honed as weapons of war in our bitter partisan politics. The film ends with the case solved, but Monsignor Spellacy banished to a small parish in the California desert, his hopes for political advancement in the Church destroyed.

Nonetheless, in the hands of media and various other entities, the photograph remains evidence and a legal and political quagmire for Detective Tom Spellacy tasked with an open and public investigation of a murder scene leading to political corruption. Tom knows that any pursuit of the case that involves this photograph will inevitably destroy the career and good name of his innocent brother. Tom struggles about what to do, but in the end he does the right thing. He pursues the truth of the matter wherever it leads.

The case is eventually solved and of course Monsignor Spellacy had nothing to do with the matter at hand. Someone is convicted (You have to watch the film to find out who). But in the moral sensitivies of the time, which was very much like our time, the photo with the murdered prostitute and the Monsignor becomes more enticing for the press than the murder itself. The photo ends up on the Front Page of the LA Times, and Monsignor Spellacy ends up where our Gospel passage begins: in the desert where he is exiled to a tiny parish in obscurity.

Being exiled in the desert is highly symbolic in Sacred Scripture. It has ancient roots in the Book of Leviticus. This book is composed of liturgical laws for the Levitical priesthood reaching back to 1300 BC as Moses led his people through a forty-year period of exile in the Sinai desert. Some of the ritual accounts it contains are far more ancient.

In a recent Christmas post, “Silent Night and the Shepherds Who Quaked at the Sight,” I wrote that the troubles of our time are the manifestation of spiritual warfare that has been waged in the world since God’s first covenant bonds with us. Before this covenant relationship, we were doomed. Since the covenants of God there is hope for us. We remain oblivious to spiritual warfare to our own spiritual peril. As I have written many times, we now live in a vulnerable time in God’s covenant relationship with us. The Birth of the Messiah and his walking among us are equidistant in time between our existence now in the 21st Century AD and Abraham’s first encounter with God in the 21st Century BC.

Our Day of Atonement Begins

The Gospel according to St Luke (4:1-13) is also set in the desert as the Day of Atonement begins for all humankind. Revealed in Baptism as the Son of God …

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.”

— Luke 4:1

The scene has roots in an ancient ritual for the Day of Atonement described in Leviticus 16:5-10. Aaron, the high priest …

“Shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering .... Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats, one for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the Lord, and offer it as a sin offering, but the goat upon which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the desert wilderness to Azazel …”

— Leviticus 16:5,7-10

This describes the ritual for purification known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, from Leviticus Chapter 16. The ritual reaches far beyond Moses into the time of God’s covenant with Abraham some 2000 years before the Birth of the Messiah.

There are two goats mentioned in the ritual: One for sacrifice, to Yahweh, and the other — the one bearing the sins of Israel — is “for Azazel.” This name appears only in Leviticus 16 and nowhere else in Scripture except here in the Gospel of Luke and in some of the apocryphal writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. One of them is the Apocryphal Book of Enoch, the name of a figure in Genesis who “walked with God” and “was taken up from the Earth.” As such, Enoch is presented in the genealogy of Jesus in Luke (3:37), and thus was spared the deluge of Noah and the destruction intended for all mankind.

The name Azazel is believed by most scholars to be the name of a fallen angel and follower of Satan. Azazel haunts the desert wilderness. Some scholars believe Azazel to be the being referred to as “the night hag” in Isaiah 34:14.

The Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible called the second goat “caper emissarius,” (“the goat sent out”). An English translation rendered it “escape goat” from which the term “scapegoat” has been derived. A scapegoat is one who is held to bear the wrongs of others, or of all. The symbolism in the Gospel of Jesus being led by the Spirit into the desert to face the devil is striking because Jesus is to become, by God’s own design, the scapegoat for the sins of all humanity.

In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, Jesus is described as “filled with the Holy Spirit.” This term appears in only three other places in Scripture, all three also written by Saint Luke. In the Book of Acts of the Apostles (6:5) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit” was the first to be chosen to care for widows and orphans in the daily distribution of food. Later in Acts (7:55) Stephen, “filled with the Holy Spirit gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God” as he became the first Martyr of the Church.

The witnesses who approved of the stoning of Stephen “laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58) whose radical conversion to become Saint Paul would build the global Church.

Also in Acts (11:24) Barnabas is filled with the Holy Spirit as he founded the first Church beyond Jerusalem for the Gentiles of Antioch. The sense of the term “filled with the Holy Spirit” in Saint Luke’s passages alludes to the hand of God in our living history.

In our first Sunday Gospel for Lent, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, “having returned from the Jordan,” is led by the Spirit for forty days in the desert wilderness. The Gospel links this account to his Baptism at the Jordan at which he is revealed as “Son of God.” This revelation becomes, in the desert scene, a diabolical taunt, and knowing that Jesus has fasted becomes the devil’s first temptation: “If you are the Son of God, turn this stone into bread.” Jesus thwarts the temptation and the taunt with a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Deuteronomy 8:3), “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

The symbolism is wonderful here. Like the Father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son — also from Luke (15:11-32) — God had two sons. In the Book of Exodus (4:21-22) Israel is called God’s “first-born son”:

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles which I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let my son go, I will slay your first-born son’.”

It was the fulfillment of this command of God that finally broke the yoke of slavery and caused Pharaoh to release Israel from bondage. But, as the Parable of the Prodigal Son implies of the Prodigal Son’s older brother, Israel was not faithful to the Word of God, and spent forty years wandering in the desert as a result of its infidelity.

In the Gospel of Luke, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity assumed the humanity of the first son, and was led by the Spirit into the desert to save us in the Second Exodus, our release, through the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God, from the eternal bondage of sin and death.

Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism

The second temptation is the lure of political power. In a single instant, the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said, “I shall give you all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me… all this will be yours if you worship me.” This has been the downfall of many, including many in our Church. Jesus again quotes from Scripture, “It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone” (Deuteronomy 6:13). This Gospel revisits the lure of political power immediately after the Institution of the Eucharist:

“A dispute arose among them, which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves… I am among you as one who serves.”

— Luke 22:24-26

The Greek in which this Gospel was written used for the word “leader” the term “hēgoumenos.” Its implication refers especially to a religious leader. The Letter to the Hebrews (13:7) uses the same Greek term for “leaders,” and it is not their Earthly power which is to be emulated, but their faith to the extent to which they reflect Christ:

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

— Hebrews 13:7-8

Though it doesn’t generate the media’s obsession with sexual scandals, hubris and self-centered aggrandizement have been a far greater problem in our Church, and are the underlying catalyst for almost all other scandals, sexual, financial, and reputational. This culture has led Church leaders into the temptation of Earthly Powers, and too many have been eager participants. Some refer to this as “clericalism,” and in my opinion the best commentary on it was a brief article by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus in First Things entitled, “Clerical Scandal and the Scandal of Clericalism.”

The Payment of Judas Iscariot

Catholicism in America thrived when it had to earn its dignity. Once it became politically accepted, it went on in this culture to become comfortable, and its leaders (“hēgoumenos”) perhaps a bit too comfortable. Religious authority and the sheer masses of believers spelled political power. The pedestals upon which we stood grew in height with every clerical advance, and our bishops stood upon the highest pedestals of all with palatial trappings more akin to the courts of Herod and Caesar than the Cross of Christ the King, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

It is no mystery why, as the height of our pedestals grew, so did our scandals. This is perhaps why Jesus offered to us the way to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” It is because he alone could be led by the Spirit into the desert of temptation and emerge without dragging along behind Him the evil He encountered there.

As the last temptation of Christ unfolded in the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent, it is now the devil, in a final effort, who dares to quote and distort the Word of God. He led Jesus to Jerusalem, and to the parapet, the highest point of the highest place, the Temple of Sacrifice. And now comes his final taunt:

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone’.”

— Luke 4:9-11, quoting Psalm 91

This devil of the desert takes up the argument of Jesus, the Word of God, quoting Psalm 91 (11-12). The taunt to test God and “go your own way” is far deeper than the mere words convey. In Jerusalem, the devil will take hold of Judas Iscariot (Luke 22:3) leading to the trial before Pilate and the Way of the Cross. In Jerusalem, the powers of darkness, first encountered here in the desert, are mightily at work: “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.” (Luke 22:53)

The Church in the Western world has entered a time of persecution but thus far the institutional response — having traded the Gospel for “zero tolerance” in a quest for scapegoats to cast out into the desert to Azazel — does not bode well for the faith of a Church built upon the blood of the martyrs.

Perhaps, as the Spirit leads us into this desert, it is our vocation, and not that of our leaders, that is essential. Perhaps it is not clerical reform that is needed so much as a revolution — a revolution of fidelity that can only be lived and not just talked about. We will not find the Holy Spirit in a revolution that manifests itself in blessing sin or in any politically correct acquiescence to same-sex unions that some now call the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and other moral distortions of our time. Those who abandon their faith in a time in the desert were leaving anyway, just waiting for the right excuse. To use the behavior of leaders to diminish and then abandon the Sacrament of Salvation is to cave to the true goal of Azazel. He could not lure Christ from us, but he can lure us from Christ and he is giving it a go.

The devil finally gives up in the desert scene of the Last Temptation of Christ in Luke Chapter 4. But the devil is not quite done. Luke’s Gospel tells that he will return “at a more opportune time.” Satan finds that time not in an effort to test Jesus, but rather to test his followers. He targets Judas Iscariot in the last place we would ever expect to find the devil: “Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this Ash Wednesday post. You may also like these other posts from Beyond These Stone Walls as we proceed through Lent:

Pope Francis Had a Challenge for the Prodigal Son’s Older Brother

A U.S. Marine Who Showed Me What to Give Up for Lent

Satan at The Last Supper: Hours of Darkness and Light

Behold the Lamb of God Upon the Altar of Mount Moriah

We presently have 39 titles in our collection of Scriptural posts, The Bible Speaks.

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Behold, the Lamb of God

As Christmastide gives way to Ordinary Time in the Sunday Mass Gospel, John the Baptist connects the Lamb of God to the time of Abraham 2000 years before Christ.

January 14, 2026, Ordinary Time

Note from Father Gordon MacRae: In 17 years writing for this blog I have produced about 850 posts from inside a prison cell with access only to an old typewriter. After I type them, I mail them to be scanned by an editor and then published at Beyond These Stone Walls. Once I mail a post, I have no means to ever see it again except on the rare occasion when I can make a photocopy. Once published, readers can see it but I cannot. So these 850 posts, at least for me, exist only in my mind. It seems inevitable that I would eventually write content that is familiar to readers.

After the Gospel passage about the Baptism of Jesus, the Church’s liturgy enters Ordinary Time. The Sunday Gospel this week, According to Saint John (1:29-34), begins with a declaration of John the Baptist as he saw Jesus coming toward him at the River Jordan: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” This is the source of the Agnus Dei, the declaration we recite three times before the reception of the Eucharist at every Mass. The declaration has its origin in this Gospel passage.

It has another origin story as well, deep in the chasms of Salvation History. I set out to write about that this week, and then realized that I already had. So this post should sound familiar. I thank you for reading and sharing it.

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“This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain had we not been redeemed.”

— from the Easter Vigil Exultet

You might readily see the irony of my invoking the subject of this post in the haunting passage above. It is from the Exultet, that wondrous proclamation of Salvation History as the Paschal Candle is blessed at the doors of the church in the liturgy for the Easter Vigil. The imagery of Christ breaking the prison bars of death may understandably have deep meaning for me. The excerpt recalls a scene from Holy Week that I once wrote about in “To the Spirits in Prison: When Jesus Descended into Hell.”

That post conveys the story referenced in the Second Letter of Saint Peter, about what happened to Jesus on what we now call Holy Saturday, that period of darkness between the Cross and the Resurrection.

Back in February 2025, I wrote a post entitled “On the Great Biblical Adventure, the Truth Will Make You Free.” It mentioned my recent acquisition of the much anticipated Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Old and New Testament edited by Dr. Scott Hahn. That post also referred to a recent and surprising resurgence of biblical interest throughout the free world. I learned of that explosion of interest when Ignatius Press placed me on a waiting list for that particular bible, and I had to wait for its fourth or fifth printing. I have been lugging the weighty hardcover tome, consisting of 2,314 pages, around with me for months at this writing. I don’t seem to be able to part with it for long. It is a treasure trove of biblical insight and truth, filled not only with readable and scholarly translations of Sacred Scripture, but also with scholars’ notes on the biblical texts. From a historical perspective it draws clear connections between the Old and New Testaments. From a spiritual perspective it is as though a lamp has been relit opening for me, and hopefully also for you, a world of deeper meaning embedded within the texts. As I mentioned in a previous post, my goal has been two-fold: to educate, or rather reeducate myself on the story of God and us, and to avoid dropping the very heavy book on my foot in the process.

The interpretation of a religious text is a study called exegesis. It seeks to convey and understand both the literal and spiritual sense of biblical truths. Neither should be sacrificed in pursuit of the other. I have often described it this way: There is a story on its surface, which is true, and a far greater story in its depths which points to even greater truths. One way in which the spiritual truth of Scripture is expressed is in allegory. Jesus told many allegorical accounts in parables. Most readers are clear that the truth in these precious accounts is in the lesson they convey. Two of the most famous examples are the “Parable of the Good Samaritan” and the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” both found in the Gospel of Luke. You know these stories well, and they need no explanation.

Most of Sacred Scripture is not conveyed in parable form, but as a historical narrative. Allegory is still very much a part of that narrative, and we are cheating our understanding of a text when we suppress its allegorical content. We should start by accepting both truths: the truth of the historical content of Scripture and the equal and sometimes even greater truth in its allegorical content. In this sense allegory refers to a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or religious one. In the 19th and 20th centuries, fundamentalist Scripture scholars stripped allegory from their interpretations of the text, but at great cost. More modern scholars have restored it. One of them has been Dr. Scott Hahn.

When I cited an excerpt from the Exultet Proclamation from the Easter Vigil liturgy as I opened this post, I later realized that the Second Reading for the Easter Vigil Mass is one that I have pondered for a very long time. It is from Genesis 22:1-19, the story of God calling upon Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son. “So momentous is this event in its outcome,” wrote Scott Hahn, “that it stands as one of the defining moments of Salvation History.” I have set out to study the great depths of this account and they are astonishing.

Abraham and Isaac

Isaac is a Hebrew name, of course, and it means “He laughs.” It has its origin in Genesis 17:16-17: “ ‘I will bless (Sarah) and moreover I will give you a son by her; I will bless her and she shall be the mother of nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’ ”

Abraham apparently gave little thought to the wisdom of falling to the ground and laughing at God. The fact that he “said it to himself” is no guarantee that God would not have heard it loud and clear. And so it was that the Word of God came to give the son of Abraham and Sarah the name “Isaac,” which means “He laughs.”

Abraham was apparently not the only one laughing. God seemed to get a chuckle out of it as well.

As the story progressed, the significance of Isaac’s birth was immediate. He was to be the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Isaac was to be the bearer of the covenant into future generations: “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for him and his descendants after him” (Genesis 17:19). Then the drama of the Book of Genesis reaches its greatest intensity with the heart-wrenching story of God’s call to Abraham to sacrifice as a burnt offering his beloved son upon the heights of Mount Moriah. Had Abraham shown anything less than heroic faith and obedience the grand narrative of the Bible would have developed very differently thereafter. Here is the Genesis account which became the Second Reading of our Easter Vigil liturgy.

From the Book of Genesis 22:1-18:

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, “Take your son, your only begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and went to the place of which God had told him. … Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on the shoulders of his son to carry, and he took in his own hands the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. Isaac said to his father, “Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham! Do not lay your hand on your son or do anything to him for now I know that you have not withheld your only begotten son from me.” Abraham then lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught by his horns in a thicket. So Abraham went and took the lamb and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place YHWH YIR’EH, in Hebrew, “The Lord will see.”

It is from this very account that, twenty one centuries later, the Gospel of John (1:29) proclaims “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

I have always felt that this account in Genesis was a presage, a looking far ahead, to the sacrifice of Jesus upon Golgotha. It is allegorical in that sense. The account is true on its literal face but it is also true that it echoes the Greatest Story Ever Told which will come many centuries later. All the elements are there. The Second Book of Chronicles (3:1) identifies Moriah as the site upon which, nearly one thousand years later, Solomon would build the Jerusalem Temple, and Calvary, where the only begotten Son of God was crucified, is a hillock in the Moriah range. So for the Hebrew reader of the story of the Crucifixion, there is a powerful sense of déjà vu: the place, the mount, Abraham placing the wood for sacrifice upon the back of Isaac, and is not the ram caught by its horns in the thicket highly reminiscent of the Crown of Thorns? But we cannot reminisce backwards. This amazing account from Genesis is a mysterious example of the power of biblical inspiration. Only in the mind of God, in the time of Genesis, was the story of Christ evident.

From Sheol to the Kingdom of Heaven

In the Old Testament, “to die” meant to descend to Sheol. It was our final destination. To rise from the dead, therefore, meant to rise from Sheol, but no one ever did. The concept of Sheol being the “underworld” is a simple employment of the cosmology of ancient Judaism which understood the abode of God and the heavens as being above the Earth, and Sheol, the place of the dead, as below it. This is the source of our common understanding of Heaven and hell, but it omits a vast theological comprehension of the death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus and the human need to understand our own death in terms of faith.

If, up to the time of Jesus, “to die” meant to descend into Sheol, then Jesus introduced an entirely new understanding of death in his statement from the Cross to the penitent criminal, Dismas, who pleaded from his own cross, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus responded, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). This is an account that I once told entitled, “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.”

It is by far the most widely read of our Holy Week posts, and not just at Holy Week. On the Cross, where the penitent criminal comes to faith while being crucified along with Jesus, God dissolves the bonds of death because death can have no power over Jesus. It is highly relevant for us that the conditions in which the penitent Dismas entered Paradise were to bear his cross and to come to faith.

It was at the moment Jesus declared, in His final word from the Cross, “It is finished,” that Heaven, the abode of God, opened for human souls for the first time in human history. The Gospels do not treat this moment lightly:

“It was now about the sixth hour [3:00 PM], and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Saying this he breathed his last.”

— Luke 23:44-46

“And behold, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the Earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised ... When the centurion, and those who were with him keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, ‘Clearly, this was the Son of God.’”

— Matthew 27:51-54

The veil of the Temple being torn in two appears also in Mark’s Gospel (15:38) and is highly significant. Two veils hung in the Jerusalem Temple. One was visible, separating the outer courts from the sanctuary. The other was visible only to the priests as it hung inside the sanctuary before its most sacred chamber in which the Holy of Holies dwelled (see Exodus 26:31-34). At the death of Jesus, the curtain of the Temple being torn from top to bottom is symbolic of salvation itself. Upon the death of Jesus, the barrier between the Face of God and His people was removed.

According to the works of the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus, the curtain barrier before the inner sanctuary that was torn in two was heavily embroidered with images of the Creation and the Cosmos. Its destruction symbolized the opening of Heaven, God’s dwelling place and the Angelic Realm, to human souls.

In ancient Israel in the time of Abraham and Isaac the concept of Sheol after death was closely connected with the grave and pictured only as a gloomy underworld hidden deep in the bowels of the Earth. There human souls descended after death (Genesis 37:35) to a joyless existence where the Lord is neither seen nor worshipped. Both the righteous and the wicked sank into the nether world (Genesis 44:31). Despite the apparent finality of death, Scripture displays great confidence in the power of God to deliver his people from its clutches. That confidence was made manifest in the deliverance of Jesus from his tomb after he displayed the power of God to the one place where he had always been absent, the realm of the dead. “For Christ also died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and declared to the spirits in prison who did not formerly obey when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)

The essential point for us could not be clearer or more hopeful. Besides Jesus himself, the first to be sanctioned with a promise of paradise was a condemned prisoner who, even in the intense suffering of his own cross, refused to mock Jesus but rather came to believe and then place all his final hope in that belief. As I ended “Dismas, Crucified to the Right” Dismas was given a new view from his cross, a view beyond death away from the East of Eden, across the Undiscovered Country of Death, toward his sunrise and eternal home.

I have written many times that we live in a most important time. The story of Abraham told above took place twenty one centuries before the Birth of the Messiah. We now live in the twenty first century after. Christ is now at the very center of Salvation History.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Please visit our new page: Abraham to Easter: The Bible Speaks, our collection of Scriptural exegesis for Beyond These Stone Walls.

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The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”