Monday, February 19, 2018


Monday, February 19, 2018
Orthodox Great Lent begins
Reading: Mark 1:9-15

"[Jesus] was in the desert forty days, tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him."   Mark 1:13

            Hebrew scholar Everett Fox notes that when one encounters the desert, wind, or fire in the Hebrew scriptures, one is about to encounter change, transformation. Mark the Evangelist, gives the tersest account of Jesus' baptism and - immediately!, Mark says - Jesus was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, into the desert, which, for Mediterranean people, was a place of spirits. Mark, unlike Matthew, does not elucidate what tests Jesus underwent in that place of spirits. The Book of Kells shows a black humanlike figure, with wings, testing Jesus; a 1360 manuscript from Köln portrays the tester as a young blonde man; in a 15th century illustration, the tester is a seemingly human man - with great birdlike feet protruding from beneath his robe. A place of spirits. What transformation occurred there? And in this intentional desert called Lent, what will we encounter among the wild beasts? How will we be transformed?

May our fasting and prayer this season, O God, lead us into transformed lives. Amen

  • ·       identify something that lures you away from your true identity as a baptized person. pray about it.


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