Alien or Pilgrim?
by Bishop Joensen | March 26, 2025
It may not have the dramatic appeal of “Once upon a time,” or “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but for the actively practicing Jew, Moses’s counsel in Deuteronomy 26:5 to present oneself before God and speak these words has a very compelling ring to it: “My father was a wandering Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as an alien.”
Jews, as people of God, have a common story that is no fairy tale or blockbuster movie; it is a story of origins traced back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It is a story of migration and alien status, of oppression and deliverance from the powers that be. It is a story of conversion from alien to resident status. No longer is one identified primarily by where one migrated from, or by wandering about in the desert, but by the destination toward which one goes on pilgrimage. It is a story of promises God keeps, of a covenant where milk and honey flows and tears and anguish are quieted. For God saves. And the appropriate response is to trust, keep his word, be faithful, and give thanks. Be a pilgrim known for his or her hope.
Moses says don’t show up empty handed, when you say, “My father was a wandering Aramean. . .” Bring a gift basket with you, filled with first fruits. The basket will show how grateful you are. And beyond the basket’s contents, the gift that pleases God most is the soil of ourselves, of the stuff of our own story, of origins, aspirations, and setbacks, of passing over and pressing on no matter what, assured that God keeps his promises.
When it comes to giving God his due and making sacrifice during these weeks of Lent, don’t get caught up in the comparison game, like way back before Abraham when the brothers Cain and Abel made their respective sacrifice and Cain got jealous because Abel’s gift pleased God more—for Abel gave from the heart, and didn’t hold back his best. Cain’s murder of his brother is part of the story—part of our story—and we know that as a result, Cain and his clan were condemned to wander the earth without relief. But we don’t say, “My father was a wandering murderer,” because God intervenes time and again, transforms our origins into a story of salvation and hope.
Yet as with our Jewish ancestors, it seems we human beings can’t stand prosperity. First fruits wither as we test the boundaries, toy with temptation, flex our freedom and our own wills in foolish ways where it seems inevitably somebody gets hurt—others and ourselves. Satan continues to prowl the world like a roaring lion, looking for unwitting persons to tempt, seduce, push over the brink of despair. The promised land of milk and honey is transformed by human sin and self-seeking into a man-made desert from which there is no relief—for days, months, years, centuries.
Exile
The Jews aren’t the only people familiar with exile, of self-imposed alien status. It is our common human tendency. We need a Savior who will honor our origins, our various chapters of life, but who will also rewrite the script once and for all to show that the hope God inspires is well-founded. We may know weakness, sadness, shame on our road of life, but we are passing over to something greater than this world supplies. We are meant for Kingdom life, where even death itself has no ultimate hold over us. God saves, delivering us from evil, just as we pray and hope in the “Our Father” prayer.
So whether we are Jew or Gentile by origin, male or female, young or old, Latino or Anglo, Karenni, Eritrean, a student, senior, married, single, straight or gay, beyond the familiar refrain, “My father was a wandering Aramean,” there are words that should even more stir our souls as we process more intently into Lent: “ 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). Jesus could have remained distant from us, offered us only a virtual meeting option from his remote location. But instead he comes HERE—into our manmade desert, where neither he nor we are spared temptation. He doesn’t cling to being God, doesn’t flex his supernatural powers when provoked. He remains fully God and human, even while he is not spared the tests that confront him, confront us.
The Spirit equips us
Jesus shows us that Spirit life—the life of grace conferred in all the sacraments, highlighted in the initial part of the pilgrimage of faith in baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist, does not confer immunity from trials and temptations. The Spirit equips us to deal with them on God’s terms: with humility, endurance, wisdom, and faith. The Spirit helps us recall God’s word that we have studied and prayed over; he reminds us that we belong to God and to others in the Church who confess with us that Jesus is Lord, that he is raised from the dead, and that he hears us every time we call upon his name.
I hope and pray as your bishop that you have already felt the joy of the Gospel, have cultivated connections and encountered new relationships that can be folded into your friendship with Jesus and with us. I hope that you consider yourself less an alien in the household of faith and more a pilgrim among pilgrims. For while you, like all of us, may have wandered about at certain points in your life, you are being prompted to turn from darkness to light, to seek the face of Jesus in all his diverse appearances among people in your life.
Temptations may come
And I both caution and encourage you that as you press on earnestly through these weeks of Lent, oriented toward the Easter font of baptism and the altar of our Eucharistic banquet, it wouldn’t be surprising even if you feel the breath of the Evil One upon you in some form, for he really wants to throw you off track from your pilgrim path.
You may not be confronted with the temptation to throw yourself off the parapet of the temple, but as biographer Father Timothy Gallagher, OMV, relates, Venerable Bruno Lanteri (founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary) exposes the typical tactics of Satan, the Enemy of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Lanteri counsels: “Does your past burden you? Do your failings and sins of the past weigh on you? Do they make it hard to believe — really believe — deep down, from the heart—that God loves you? Be sure this is not the voice of God! Our enemy willingly works in our vulnerabilities, causing this sense of burden.”
The Devil taunts us: “Look at you! Look at how little progress you made this last year, in the last years, in past months. Why do you think it will be any different now, this year? You will never make any real progress.” Again, be aware: this is not the voice of the Spirit but of the enemy.
Rely on God
To pass over these desert times, we do not rely on our power or cleverness; Lanteri encourages that we “need only two gifts of grace: a humble heart and one filled with every greater hope in God. Ask God for these two gifts today. Right now.” For Jesus on the cross merited them for us” (Gallagher, Overcoming Spiritual Discouragement, pp. 22-23).
Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, who is bearing his own Cross, his own acute vulnerability now, once told us, “Here is the key to our salvation, the key for having patience on the journey of life, the key to overcoming our deserts: looking at the Crucifix” (March 18, 2018). Further, “Let us think deeply about the suffering of Jesus, and let us say to ourselves: This is for my sake. Even if I had been the only person in the world, he would have done it. He did it for me. Let us kiss the Crucifix and say, “For my sake. Thank you, Jesus. For me” (April 16, 2014; both cited in Gallagher p. 75).
Jesus did all he did for each one of us. But not so that we remain alien from God or from one another. We are part of a people who each offer him the personal gift basket of ourselves. And he takes us with him to the Cross so that we he can give himself to us, and then give us back to ourselves, filled with the same Spirit who led him into the desert, then to Calvary, and then to life. We need not wander, but wonder at such love—a love that is saving us and drawing us together on our pilgrimage of hope.