The
Desert, God's Meeting Place
Today,
as we begin the season of Lent, we are invited to go into the desert.
The desert can be geographical - a place apart - or it can be psychological
- a time of purification. One person described it: "God is a
million light years away. He has simply disappeared." Another
said "God is in the desert. Don't be afraid to enter there. He
cannot be found anywhere else… he loves you and waits in the
desert to embrace you and lead you home." It seems that most
people who make a breakthrough to greatness of one kind or another
start with some sort of desert experience.
In
today's Gospel St. Mark tells us "and straightway (after the
Baptism) the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. And he was
there 40 days tempted by the Devil, and he lived among wild beasts
and the angels ministered to Him." He went to the desert before
beginning his public life. This was not the only time Jesus sought
the desert. From time to time we see him withdraw to find relief from
crowds and to refresh His spirit in solitude.
The
desert experience relates to our own journey of meditation. Like the
Israelites in the desert the one who meditates moves forward with
a purpose, with a sense of discovery, a sense of awakening, with one's
eyes on the horizon. The cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night
lead us on in our twice daily times of meditation. God put Israel
to the test in the desert. He promised that he would lead them to
a land of freedom and plenty. But the Israelites wavered back and
forth between trusting God's promise and doubting it. In starting
off on the journey of meditation we too often have questions and doubts.
What is meditation doing for me? Where is it leading me? Is it really
worth all the effort? Some of us, like the Israelites, are tempted
to go back to the land of Egypt and live in slavery rather then strike
out for the Promised Land.
Often
in our meditation journey God may seem absent. Our periods of meditation
feel empty and raise doubts about the faithful presence of God. But
temptations are the basic form of "testing" in the desert
experience and an inevitable part of the human condition. Temptations
faced in the desert experience reveal what a person is made of and
test the depths of our commitment to meditation. In the desert we
recognize within ourselves the presence of evil and the presence of
good, both our will to serve God and our reluctance to do so. These
forces are locked in perpetual battle. The experience of temptation
makes us realize that we cannot go forward without God's help, that
we must acknowledge our complete dependence upon Him.
As
Jesus was tempted in the desert so we will also be tempted. In the
desert of emptiness and dryness and feeling that God is absent, we
can be tempted to skip our meditation periods. We can rationalize
that we will make it up later. Behind our rationalization lies a feeling
of resentment. We are hurt. God seems to have let us down. We say
to ourselves, "If I am generous enough to give God two half hours
of my time in meditation each day, He could at least give me a little
encouragement." This is the self analysis and self-questioning
of our meditation that John Main pleads with us to avoid. This is
the self concern we are meant to leave behind in meditation. There
is nothing we can do to force God to reveal himself to us. Only the
faithful repetition and the acceptance of the poverty of the Mantra
will save us. The Israelites had to spend 40 years in the desert learning
the lesson that there was very little they could do to save themselves;
the situation was fundamentally beyond their control and they had
to place all their trust in a God who would provide for them and lead
them on one day at a time. In our own desert experience and in the
poverty and emptiness of meditation we too have to learn to accept
our state of helplessness so that God can fill us with himself.
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Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
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