Why are we tested?

Immediately, the Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tested by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. (Mark 1: 12-13)

Just one verse before this passage which opens our Gospel today, we read: “A voice came from the heavens, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Mark 1: 11). Right after God proclaims how Jesus pleases him so, the Spirit, who like a dove has just descended upon Jesus, drives this “beloved Son” into the desert. Immediately. No chance to bask in the Lord’s glory even for just a while. No “honeymoon period.” No warning at all. And he is in the desert for forty days, tested by Satan and terrified by wild beasts. What a way to treat a beloved Son!

This reminds me of how St. Teresa of Avila complained to the Lord while trapped in her own desert of a hostile community, ravaged by the wild beasts of gossip and intrigue. In response to her cries, God told her, “Teresa, that is how I treat my friends.” St. Teresa could only say, “No wonder you have so few friends.”

Why are we tested? And why does it seem like the closer we are to God, the more testing we undergo? The psalmist is surely justified when he protests because the wicked are “always free of care” and “they go on amassing wealth” (Psalm 73: 12). In the meantime, the righteous can only lament, “In vain, I have kept my heart pure… all day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments” (Psalm 73: 13-14). As the classic question goes, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Why are we tested? Certainly not to be destroyed. Our first reading today assures us of this. After going through his own harrowing forty days buffeted by winds and waves in the ark, Noah is given a promise by the Lord: “Never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed… I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Genesis 9: 11-13). Before we see that bow as the multi-colored spectrum of light that follows a rain shower, we should imagine that bow as the archer’s weapon of death and destruction. And God has hung up this bow in the clouds forever as a pledge not only of peace but of prosperity.

Why then are we tested? Does God need us to prove to him our faith and love? But is not God all-knowing? Has he not already searched our hearts? He is behind us and before us; he knows our past and our future. After going through many possible reasons, I have a feeling that we are tested not for God’s sake, but for ours. It is not God who needs to learn something about us; we need to learn something about God.

Why are we tested? The forty years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert and searching for the Promised Land can be seen as a time of great testing. But later on in Israel’s history, they saw it as the time when God courted them and proved his love. When Israel turned her back on God yet again, Hosea prophesied what the Lord desired to do: “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her... there she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt” (Hosea 2: 14-15). In the desert, Israel was to discover God as her husband all over again.

Recently, I had the blessing of listening to a lady wizened by many years of testing and tribulation. She had migrated to the U.S. in the early 70’s with her young family. She and her husband worked two, sometimes three, jobs each to have a roof over their heads, serve food on the table, and send their children to school. Shortly before the couple’s fortieth wedding anniversary, they made the last payment on their mortgage. Their house was finally their own. All their children had finished college. They had no more debts, and they even had some money saved in the bank. Their plan was to retire and rest, maybe travel a bit and visit some parts of America they had longed to see, and then celebrate their golden anniversary in the Philippines - their dream wedding, just fifty years later.

But as they started searching for bargain airplane tickets and mapping out their U.S. tour - a much-delayed honeymoon - the husband suffered a massive stroke that paralyzed half his body. Just when they could finally splurge a little without thinking of next month’s bills, the Big Test came. No chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor even for just a while. No honeymoon period. No warning at all. Their travel money and their life savings got tangled up in medical bills. The wife, recently retired, had to look for work again. She could not juggle two jobs anymore. Taking care of her husband was already a full-time job. “Why did this happen, and why then? Why them?” she wanted to ask God. But she did not even have enough free time to complain to the Lord, nor did she have the energy left to be angry with him.

It turns out though that she did not have anything to complain about, nor did she have any reason to be angry. In the mornings, her routine would be to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to set up everything for her husband - his clothes, his food, his medicines, and so on. Then, after helping him with his therapy and exercise, she would bathe him and let him take a nap. While watching him sleep, she would pray the rosary and then, with her head nestled near his shoulder, steal a few minutes of shut-eye before going off to work. She told me, “I swear, Father, I would always wake up from that nap fully refreshed and with more energy than I ever had before. Yes, life was hard, but somehow, it was also easy. And I never doubted that God was with me. He made sure that I always felt he was present and close. He was right beside me!”

Her husband died two years later. Those two years she would never consider as the most trying time in her life. In all honesty, she believes those two years were her most blessed. She and her husband spent so much quality time together - more than any trip could have given them. And in her husband’s last months, though he was never as religious as she was, she knew, by the way he squeezed her index finger before he fell asleep, she was not saying the rosary alone. She imagines that God must have been there, too, cupping their hands as they prayed.

Why are we tested? Not so that God will know how faithful we are, but so that we will know how faithful God is. In the crucible of our affliction, it is God who emerges tried, tested, and true.

The next time we find ourselves in the desert, let us try to open our eyes. We may be among wild beasts, but God’s angels will also be there ministering to us. The wise lady I met will probably disagree with my last statement. In her experience, it was God himself who ministered to her and her husband. And at no other place and time did she hear God say more clearly, “You are my beloved daughter. You are my beloved son.”

Fr. Francis was ordained in 2009 and served in the PGH until May 2011. He is currently taking further studies in Sacred Scripture. For feedback on this column, email [email protected].