’Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1).

It has been a strange season of Lent, and it will no doubt culminate in a very strange Easter Sunday. More so than any Lent most of us can remember, this one has called on Christians to truly follow our divine master into the desert.

Normally, Catholics fast and abstain during Lent. It’s a way of joining Jesus in his desert deprivation, of uniting our small, mostly symbolic suffering to his suffering that reached its loving summit on the Cross. This year, however, our deprivation has been more real, less symbolic than it has been in the past.

Hence why some bishops have granted a special dispensation relaxing their flocks’ abstinence requirements. Many of us, they understood, would be forced to fast or abstain — not to mention self-isolate — by lockdown necessity.

By Easter, it will have been ­almost 40 days since many New Yorkers began their self-isolation. While not the harsh ­Judean desert ­Jesus faced, our apartments and houses have become more arid and bare in the time we have been trapped inside them.

This year, we gave up the physical presence of each other for Lent. Just when our churches should have been fullest, they sat quiet and empty. At home, we have too much of ourselves to ponder, not enough of the world. Everything we know about Holy Week is changed or absent, the customs and traditions of long Christian centuries put on pause.

Epidemiologist’s orders.

Children miss out on the kitschy side of the season. Can the Easter Bunny make his rounds provided he wears a mask and gloves? For many of us, the smile in a child’s eyes beholding the basket of goodies has been replaced by a knowing glance from the postal worker helping us pack the goodies and ship them away.

Days after the Resurrection, Saint Thomas still had his doubts. It would have been nice to ­believe, but what kind of God would have let this all happen? Why would he forsake so many? It wasn’t until Doubting Thomas saw the wounds of crucifixion that he believed. And then Jesus had some pretty tough words for him.

“Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). This Easter, most of us will have to do a lot of believing without seeing. Without seeing our loved ones or a sumptuous spread on pastel linens. Without hearing the ancient creeds chanted, the ­sacring bells rung.

We gave each other up for Lent. But it was more than that. In so doing, we protected each other, we faced the temptation to ignore warnings, to do as we pleased, not as we should.

Most of us bound ourselves to hearth and home not out of fear for ourselves, but out of fear for others. As the day of Jesus’ Resurrection arrives, we know that our sacrifices have saved lives, that strange though this Lent may be, our good works and ­actions have flattened a curve of death and shown the power of life over it.

For most of us, this will be an Easter like no other. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. This is a confluence of events almost miraculous in its precision. We arrive at Easter just as the deadly pandemic starts turning in our favor; we celebrate, very literally, the world of the life to come. The world of bars and ball games, movies and Mass, natural and supernatural joys — that world feels closer at hand than it has in the darkness of the past few weeks.

So make the ham. I’ll puncture mine with whole cloves as my grandmother always does; could do worse than ham sandwiches for the next week of solitude. American Christians are very lucky. There are places in the world where professing that ­Jesus is risen is very dangerous, indeed.

Sunday will not be the typical Hallmark Easter. No. It will be much more than that.

We have given up each other for Lent. But as we awake on Sunday to the surreal reality of our current circumstance, there is hope. We will see each other again. We’ve done a good job, we’ve flattened the curve and soon we will have our reward in each other’s arms.

And if we still feel sorry, and we will have reason to — well, so did that mournful mother keeping station by the Cross. He didn’t disappoint her.

David Marcus is The Federalist’s New York correspondent. Twitter: @BlueBoxDave