From: Music As Prayer I have always liked the conciseness of the Gospel according to Saint Mark. While other gospel writers expand and elaborate on a story, Mark’s version is often as succinct as possible. The temptation of Christ in the wilderness, the gospel lesson for the first Sunday in Lent, is a case in point. Matthew and Luke each enumerate three different temptations and include dialogue between Jesus and Satan. But Mark reduces the story of temptation to a single verse: “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan: and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him,” (Mark 1:13). Wilderness. Temptation. Wild beasts. Angels. In four dramatic images, we feel the strenuous challenge that marks the beginning of Christ’s ministry, and if we allow the imagination of our hearts to be engaged, we view the reality of our own lives at a profounder level. Wilderness. Who of us has not known the wilderness? The wilderness of grief. The wilderness of broken relationships. The wilderness of depression. The wilderness of injustice. We have known these vast, barren stretches in our isolated souls, and we have known them as communities estranged from hope and [...]
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