Going Into The Desert

02-18-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Anthony Okolo, C.S.Sp, V.F.

Lent is here again when we draw closer to God and go into the desert with the Lord in prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The season of Lent is a season of grace because by walking with the Lord, for these forty days journey, we draw strength and grace from the life of prayer, fasting and almsgiving we do. We grow during Lent by accepting and living the Good News deeper in our lives. No matter how much the power of sin and its effect have flooded every area of our lives, salvation is possible for us the moment we make a complete turn around and embrace the mercy and love of God which He offers us every day. This is possible when we enter into the desert of our inner self to discover whom we are and what God intends for us and Lenten period that offers us that opportunity.

According to my Biblical Professor, Fr. Munachi Ezeogu “The desert was the birthplace of the people of God of the first covenant. The Hebrew people who escaped from Egypt as scattered tribes arrived in the Promised Land as one nation under God. It was in the desert that they become a people of God by covenant. In the course of their history when their love and faithfulness to God grew cold, the prophets would suggest their return to the desert to rediscover their identity, their vocation, and their mission as a way of reawakening their faith and strengthening their covenant relationship with God. The great prophets Elijah and John the Baptist were people of the desert: they lived in the desert, ate desert food and adopted a simple desert lifestyle. The desert is the university where God teaches His people.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus after baptism “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” (Mark 1:12-13) The desert was the school where Jesus came to distinguish between the voice of God which He should follow and the voice of Satan which is temptation. How many voices do we hear from the moment we get up in the morning till the moment we go to sleep at night? The countless voices in the daily paper, the soliciting voices on the radio and the television, the voices of those who live and work with us, not forgetting our own unceasing inner voices. In the desert we leave most of these voices behind to focus on distinguishing between the guiding voice of God and the tempting voice of Satan.

In the desert we come to know ourselves, our strengths and weaknesses, and our divine calling. In the desert Jesus encountered beasts and angels. There are wild beasts and angels in every one of us. Sometimes, owing to our superficial self-knowledge, we fail to recognize the wild beasts in us and give in to vainglory, or we fail to recognize the angel in us and give in to self hatred. But in the silence and recollection of the desert we come to terms with ourselves as we really are, we are reconciled with the beasts and the angels in our lives and then we begin to experience peace again for the first time. Lent is the time for the desert experience. We cannot all afford to buy a camel and head off for the desert. But we can all create a desert space in our overcrowded lives. We can set aside a place and time to be alone daily with God, a time to distance ourselves from the many noises and voices that bombard our lives every day, a time to hear God’s word, a time to rediscover who we are before God, a time to say yes to God and no to Satan as Jesus did. Welcome to Lent! Welcome to the desert!

Fr. Tony Okolo C.S.Sp., V.F.