Daybreaks: Daily Reflections for Lent & Easter

by Ron Rolheiser, OMI

“Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?’.”

(John 11:40)

“Almost all spiritualities have a special place for deserts, wilderness, and other such places where we are unprotected and in danger from untamed nature, wild beasts, and threatening spirits.

In Christian spirituality, these wild places were not meant to lie forever untouched by us and God. The idea was that we men and women of faith were meant to help God finish creation by taming these wilds, exorcizing the bad spirits there, and turning the wilderness into a garden.    

In subtle ways, both this concept and its concomitant fears are still with us. What frightens us today is not untamed geography (which we now see as inviting peace and quiet). Rather, for many of us, the untamed, the wilderness, is now visualized more as a gang-infested area within a city, crack house, single bars, strip clubs, red-light districts. These are understood as lying outside our cultivated lives, split off from the safety of home and religion, godless places, dangerous, a wilderness. 

What frightens us more are the untamed and uncultivated deserts within our own hearts, the unexplored and dark areas inside of us. Like the ancients, we are frightened of what might lie in hiding there, how vulnerable we might be if we entered there, what wild beasts and demons might prey on us there, and whether a chaotic vortex might not swallow us up should we ever venture there. We also fear unexplored places, except our fear is not for our physical safety but for our sanity and our sanctity. 

Our Christian faith invites us to go into those areas and turn those dangerous regions into cultivated land, into safe gardens. After all, that is what Jesus did. He went into every dark place, from the singles’ bars of his time into death and hell itself, and took God’s light and grace there. But he wasn’t naive. He heeded the advice of the old fairy tales and didn’t venture there alone. He entered those underworlds with his hand safely inside his Father’s , not walking alone. 
 

Faith is meant to rid us of fear, including fear of the wild beasts and demons that lurk inside the deserts of our minds, hearts, and energies. We are meant to turn those wild, dark areas into safe gardens. But we should heed both our own instincts and the lessons of the old fairy tales: never venture into the dark woods naively and alone! Make sure you are armed with a sturdy creed and that you are walking hand-in-hand with your Father” (38-39).