Photo by Mohammed Moussa
Why the desert, the mountain, the wilderness?
Well, it’s hard to find time and focus in the busyness with which tend to fill our lives. Getting away from it all seems to be the best way to find God. Yet it is important to note that we aren’t just running away from the world, but running to God.
During this Lenten season our focus tends to be on ourselves—reflecting on our sins, our faults, our shortcomings—and this is a necessary part of repentance, yet, this is not the end to which the Lenten practices are ordered. Lent is meant to help us rid our lives of the things that keep us from God—busyness, noise, sin. We go to the desert to find God in solitude, silence, intimacy.
The second time Moses receives the Ten Commandments we find Him going yet again up the mountain.
Freedom to Focus
“He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”
~ Exodus 34:27-28
He spent those forty days free from all distractions, even food and water, being nourished on a deeper level by the word of God, the “words of the covenant”. Sounds a whole lot like what our Lenten practices and sacrifices are meant to be. However, it’s what happens afterwards that unveils for us the true purpose of Lent.
“As Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant in his hands, he did not know that the skin of his face had become radiant while he spoke with the LORD.”
~ Exodus 34:29
Having been rid of the things that take up and take over our normal daily lives, Moses entered into real intimacy with God, the purpose of our very existence. And as a result, He was changed. Something was different about him. So much so that people noticed it. It is described here as a radiance, much like we say that a pregnant woman is glowing. And in the same respect it is a new life growing within that causes this effect, in his case it is not a developing child, but rather his own soul growing and developing in holiness, set on fire with the love of God.
Encountering Intimacy, Achieving Perfection
If the purpose of our lives is to grow in holiness, to be perfected in love, then we must actively pursue friendship and intimacy with God. As in any relationship we have to put in time and effort. Though the results are in His hands, we cannot sit around and wait for God to come to us. We are called to a “vocation to perfection” (LG 32) and we can only achieve it with the help of God’s grace and by learning to walk with Him in that same type of intimacy that Moses models for us. We are called to the desert, to the mountain.
“After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them.”
~ Mark 1:2-3
Jesus, like Moses, in His deep intimacy with the Father becomes a reflection of the light of the Father. Even He took those journeys in between miracles and signs to go out alone to the desert, to the mountains to pray and be with God. It was a result of this special time with God that the glory of the Lord was so evident in His every word and action.
We too are called to the desert, to the mountain, to find God. He beckons to you and to me, calling us to “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). Away from the chaos and busyness of our daily lives are able to find Him in the “tiny wispering sound” (1 Kgs 19:12). In silence and solitude, away from the distractions of the world we can rekindle the romance, be renewed in our relationship with God, and be filled with His light so that we can be a reflection of Him in the world, not for our own glory, but so that all who see us might see Him.
This is the challenge of Lent. The dietary restrictions, the call to conversion, the rules and regulations are not ends in themselves, but guideposts along the path leading us into the desert and up the mountain where we too might be transfigured in the love of God.