Lesson: Gn 9:8-15
Epistle: 1 Pt 3:18-22
Gospel: Mk 1:12-15
“Temptation on the Mountain” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-11)
The Gospel for this First Sunday of Lent recounts the forty day fast of Jesus in the desert, according to the Gospel of Saint Mark:
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.
After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
"This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel."
The image and reality of the desert is one of deep significance in the Christian spiritual tradition. Flannery O’Connor, when asked why she focused on the poor so much in her writings, responded that the poor tend to have a clearer vision of the divine, not because of any special grace of holiness that God bestows on the materially destitute (she was well aware of the grave moral and spiritual pathologies that can and do abound among them), but because the poor, who live more precariously than the more prosperous classes, dwell in constant proximity to the raw edge of existence.
The lives of the poor unfold with little to shield them from the vicissitudes of suffering and misfortune. Because of this proximity to the boundary between life and death, because the urgent demands of survival day in and day out are never far from their minds, the poor tend to have a clearer interior vision. They have a greater awareness of their constant dependence upon God, because of how little they can depend on any other form of erstwhile security.
This is analogous to life in the desert. While today when we speak of “the desert” in the spiritual context, we tend to employ it metaphorically to refer to one of several realities related to the mystical life. However, for Jesus, and for the early monks and hermits who first embraced contemplative life, “the desert” was the literal, physical context in which prayer, fasting, and encounter with God unfolded. There is something attractive and spiritually necessary about the desert, beyond its aptness as a metaphor. To really come to grips with a solid understanding of what “the desert” means in our lives, we need to examine its literal and historical reality, especially as it relates to Sacred Scripture and the early Church.
In the context of the ancient Levant, the desert is the counterpoint to the city. In the city, we find bustle and noise, throngs of people, neighbors, rivals, business partners, commerce, wells, granaries, soldiers, and kings. Here we find all the trappings of civilization that allow one to live with relative security in the here-and-now, rooted in the minutiae of life, surrounded by stability, order, material possessions, amusements, and friends. In short, we find everything we need to avoid ever having to cast our eyes upward or bend our minds to things beyond the small matters of this present age.
The desert could not be more different. Life in the desert is solitary. The nomad proceeds, if not alone, then with only a small band of close family and servants. Existence is precarious. One faces treacherous weather, hostile bandits, and the ever-present search for fresh pastures and wells. There are no storehouses or granaries in which to pile up treasures and supplies against the day of misfortune. Everything one owns is either carried in packs or driven in herds.
There are precious few entertainments and opportunities for tales and gossip from near and far away. Silence is as constant a companion as is the heat and the open sky. There are no walls, soldiers, and chariots to protect against the violence and rapaciousness of men, from murder and cruel enslavement. What security one has beyond the strength of one’s arm and the arms of one’s servants and sons must come God above. Like Flannery O’Connor’s poor, the desert dweller lives always on the edge of the boundary between life and death, between the temporal realities of this passing world and the eternal realities of God’s Kingdom in Heaven.
That the God of Israel is a desert god tells us a great deal about Him and about ourselves. The false gods of the nations of Canaan and Mesopotamia were as connected to cities as their worshippers. The Baals were adored on hilltops and high places near or right in the midst of villages and towns. The cultic worship of Astarte and Moloch was carried out to ensure success in earthly enterprises: fertile fields and victory in battle. Their ceremonies were elaborate civic affairs, and directed toward the greater good of the city.
Contrast this with how God appears in Genesis. The God Who reveals Himself to Abraham in the desert is a God of encounter. He speaks directly to Abraham. His purpose in revealing Himself to the Patriarchs is that of entering into relationship with them. He leads Abraham away from his home city of Ur out into the desert, where over the coming decades he teaches Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to rely on Him alone, through a precarious, transient life amongst the settled peoples of Canaan. He even deigns to dine with Abraham and Sarah in their own tent!
For his part, Abraham offers God worship and sacrifice of the simplest and most straightforward variety: not developing any elaborate cultic practices or permanent places of worship, but simply by erecting an altar, sacrificing out of his livelihood (a livelihood, remember, that is precarious at the best of times), and then moving on. The relationship between God and Abraham is straightforward and direct, marked by the kind of frank conversation that bespeaks more of an exchange occurring from the swaying back of a camel than from the soaring heights of a ziggurat.
Moving forward to Moses and the Book of Exodus, we witness this same God of encounter situating Himself once again in the desert. He leads His people into the desert of Sinai, yes, to liberate them, but above all to reestablish His relationship with them. While the Israelites’ stubbornness, carnal appetites, and bouts of idolatry, to say nothing of their greatly increased numbers, necessitate a more formal relationship, sealed by the giving of the Law and the establishment of a cultic priesthood, God still speaks to Moses face-to-face, as one man does with another.
Throughout the forty-year sojourn in the wilderness, God keeps his people in a harsh and barren land, devoid of natural sustenance and support, for the purpose of continuing to build that relationship of trust and dependence, that Israel might learn to look to God alone. On the fringes of great empires and at the ragged edge of the human capacity to survive, the Lord of Israel Himself provides for the needs of His people, in the form of manna, quail, and water from the rock.
Even after Israel enters into the Holy Land and takes possession of it, the Lord remains a God of the desert. In the centuries between Moses and David, God dwells with His people in a tent. For David, this is a matter of scandal, but tellingly, God insists that it will be the son of David who builds for God a permanent temple among His people in His holy city, in a foreshadowing of the true habitation that is to come in the person of Jesus Christ.
This is why the desert has always been an attractive prospect for spiritual persons. Christian spirituality is one of encounter. We seek to enter the desert so as to find the Lord Who reveals Himself to us there. Whether this desert takes the physical form of remote monastery or hermitage, or the time carved out of our daily routine, or in small sacrifices embraced for love of God, Christian mysticism constitutes a setting off into the wilderness. We as Christians are called to leave behind the material supports that this world offers us on every side, and to seek friendship with God in a place and in a manner in which we totally depend upon His love and care.
We will not find Him in the things and cares of this world. Even if He is found among the pots and pans, He is not found in those things. God pitches His tent outside the city, and he calls for us to meet Him there. In Book II of The Dark Night, Saint John of the Cross says, “Spiritually speaking, the desert is an interior detachment from every creature in which the soul neither pauses nor rests in anything.”
Lent is a season in which we, together with the rest of the Church, are called to rededicate ourselves to this interior detachment. In the desert, we find space enough for God, just as we find in the purified caverns of our soul. We are called in Lent to be spiritual nomads, who do not attach ourselves places, possessions, or people, but who strive, with the help of His grace, to live free beneath the aegis of His protection and to dwell in ever-deeper friendship with the God of Abraham.