IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT
The grand religious movements have almost always been born in the desert. They are the men and women of silence and solitude who, seeing the light, can be converted into teachers and guides of humanity. In the desert what’s superfluous doesn’t count. In silence only the essential questions are heard. In solitude, the only ones who survive are those who feed on what’s inside.
In the fourth Gospel, the Baptist gets reduced to what’s essential. He isn’t the Messiah, nor Elijah returned to life, nor the awaited Prophet. He is «the voice crying out in the desert». He has no political power, doesn’t possess any religious title. He doesn’t speak from the Temple or the synagogue. His voice isn’t born of political strategy or religious interests. He comes from what a human being hears when she goes deep into what’s essential.
The Baptist’s presentiment can be summed up thus: «There’s someone greater, more worthy and more hopeful than what we are living. Our life must change at its root». It’s not enough to visit the synagogue Sabbath after Sabbath, it’s no good to routinely read the sacred texts, it’s useless to regularly offer the sacrifices prescribed by the Law. No religion gives life. You must open yourself to God’s living Mystery.
In the society of abundance and progress it’s getting more and more difficult to hear a voice that comes from the desert. What is heard is the advertising for what’s superfluous, the spreading of what’s trivial, the hot air of politicians imprisoned in their strategy, and even self-interested religious discourses.
Someone could think that it’s no longer possible to know witnesses who speak to us from the silence and the truth of God. That’s not true. In the middle of the desert of modern life we can encounter people who radiate wisdom and dignity, since they don’t live by what’s superfluous. Simple people, dearly human. They don’t pronounce a lot of words. It’s their life that speaks.
They invite us, like the Baptist, to let ourselves «be baptized», to submerge ourselves in a different life, to receive a new name, «to be reborn» so that we don’t feel ourselves as a product of this society or as children of our environment, but as beloved sons and daughters of God.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
