The Temptation of the Authoritarian in the Desert
One man, drunk on power, claims he alone can fix it. In the desert, Jesus refuses the lie. He rejects spectacle, rejects domination, rejects the shortcut — choosing God’s lowliness over the throne.
Dear friends —
Beginning this week, Letters from Leo is publishing daily Lenten reflections through Easter, available exclusively to paid subscribers.
Each meditation will explore what it means to follow Jesus more faithfully in the midst of American civic and political life — not as partisans first, but as Christians whose consciences are shaped by the Cross.
Lent is a season of repentance, renewal, and resolve.
It is a time to confront our idols, strip away our illusions, and allow the light of God’s redeeming love to search and purify our hearts.
I hope you will walk this forty-day road with me — as your brother and fellow sinner — embracing prayer, sacrifice, and deeper conversion, and allowing the God of liberation to claim every corner of our lives and our public witness in an age of creeping authoritarianism.
“One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.” — (Matthew 4:4)
The desert is not a place we go to find ourselves; it is a place we go to lose the versions of ourselves that are no longer true.
Today, as we mark the First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel brings us into the wilderness with Jesus. It is a stark, silent landscape.
But as any of us who have lived through the political and social droughts of the last few years know, the desert is never truly empty. It is populated by the voices of temptation — the subtle, seductive whispers that tell us there is an easier way to save the world than through the Cross.
In today’s Gospel, the tempter approaches Jesus at his most vulnerable moment. After forty days of fasting, Jesus is hungry.
And the first temptation is so profoundly American.
