ALONE IN THE DESERT

Long before the Lord Christ “was driven by the Spirit,” as St Mark says, “into the desert,” men and women have gone into the wild places of the world to look for God. “The desert” doesn’t necessarily mean the barren, waterless expanse of Egypt, though Christian monasticism has its birth in there. We think of deserts as places like the Sahara or Death Valley, with high temperatures and low rainfall, though the underlying Latin word means “an empty place,” a place we might say is deserted. A desert is someplace far from humanity—a place alone.

That seems to be the cogent point for those Christian athletes of the spiritual life. They went to the desert to be alone, “far from the madding crowd.” They understood the difficulties of hearing the “still small Voice” Elijah heard at the end of his forty days in the desert while surrounded the cacophony of the world.

To hear the voice of God, they left the voice of men behind.

It sounds psychologically unhealthy. Fleeing human society in search of Something more, Something greater, at the very least sounds elitist, superior, stuck-up, not very sociable. What is greater and more practical than the service of our fellow man?

The Lord Christ said “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” The second of His commandments, that we love our neighbor, is like unto the first. The Lord tells us our love for our fellows derives from our love of God. The desert demand of the Gospel is to love God above all things, visible and invisible.

We’re tempted with all sorts of false loves—love of wealth, power, position and security; even the love of friends, family, and spouse. All these “things” are potentially good things, except most of us put them in the place of the First Love. When we do, the best of human loving becomes distorted. When we love God—or tell ourselves we love God—somewhere down the list of our lovings, what we really are doing in putting something else in His place—and even when that something else is our spouse, our child or our dearest friend, that distorts both our love of God and the “love” we put in His place.

So the desert calls all of us, not just the spiritual athlete. We’re all faced with the question of who or what we love. We turn to the desert to refine and purify the “fallen” loves of our life.

The desert becomes a place of truth-telling, if we have the courage for it. Who do you love? Why? If you’re willing to tell yourself the truth in answer to these questions, what does that tell you about yourself? These are the questions of the desert, the questions of Lent.

“The brothers sought Abba Jonah in his desert cell and asked him, ‘Why do you live so far from the brotherhood?’ The old man said, ‘Solitude is like the furnace of Babylon, where the three children found the Son of God; and it is like the pillar of cloud where God spoke with Moses. To hear the voice of God, flee the noise of man.’ ”—from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers