1st Sunday of Lent Reflection: Desolation and Confusion
First Sunday of Lent Year B – Desolation and Confusion – Mark 1: 12-15
The manifestation of truth and light, which is the other side of love, brings delight to the soul. This is the greatest gift of grace received in revelation and insight. This delight is however also the precursor of the darkest desolation, empty and grey.
The very instant that God’s Spirit of Love pours into our hearts to enthral and delight, another spirit, the Accuser, also pay attention. Naked we stand before the accuser, revealed and unmasked, inviting us away from the truth and the light with promises of riches, power, and prestige in this worldly kingdom that stands opposed to the Kingdom of God.
This is the dark night of the soul that purifies our intentions, demanding that we make a choice. Jesus points us to the way into the solitude and silence of the desert, joined in our humanity, so that we also may make our own choice.
This was the Way Jesus cared for his own soul, in times of overwhelming distress and grief, how he taught his disciples, and finally how he prepared for his own death on the cross. For Jesus, the wilderness was a place of preparation and it is a place of making decisions.
In this worldly kingdom, there are all kinds of distinctions created by our human society. Age, wealth, fame, and public image are rankings that we use to slot people into. Nearly every society in the history of the world has developed its own ugly class or caste system. Circumstances of birth, wealth, privilege and education have divided men and women from each other. This is the kingdom of the world as opposed to God’s Kingdom.
In the kingdom of this world, we see sin and evil intertwined in a deathly embrace. Just as there are two strands of insight about the nature of evil as a result of half-hearted virtue as opposed to radicalised “overkill”, so there are two understandings of the nature of sin; a burden that we carry or a debt to be repaid, the Babylon effect utilised by the Accuser.
For our soul to return to the grace of God’s delight, it is necessary that we expose within ourselves that confusion between the nature of God and the nature of the Accuser.
In this confusion it is God who becomes the accuser, the avenger, and the tyrant marking each deed for retribution, seeking to rob us of our humanity, to rob us of the kingdom of God, and finally to rob us of our divine destiny.
This confusion, this trans-positioning between the nature of God and the nature of the accuser robs us of the joy of the gospel. This confusion strips our lives of light, truth, beauty, and the beatitude of God’s delight turning Gods’ good tidings into condemning missive of eternal servitude and final destruction.
The call is always urgent: change your hearts and have faith in the good tidings.
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