SAN ANTONIO • Taking the wilderness narrative from the Book of Numbers as a point of departure, Sister M. Timothea Elliott, RSM, led attendees at the Catholic Formation and Leadership Conference on Oct. 27 on a biblical journey through the challenges, temptations, spiritual principles and prayer forms in relation to our own personal and community journeys as a pilgrim people of God.
Noting the wilderness motif is only part of a larger paradigm uniting the Old and New Testaments, she began by highlighting the journey of the Israelites in Exodus, an event formative to the national and religious consciousness of Israel and which continues to be celebrated in the Jewish Passover feast with its Seder meal. The New Testament, she said, looks to this paradigm to speak of the fulfillment of a long sequence of events and promises that are realized in Jesus Christ, who rescued the “new Israel” through his death and resurrection. This is also celebrated in a meal, the commemoration during Mass of the Last Supper.
She noted there are three different Hebrew words used to denote wilderness in the Old Testament, each having a slightly different connotation and used according to the terrain being described. First is yeshimon, meaning a desolate wasteland, full of danger. The second term, midbar, denotes an unpopulated area of uncultivated pastureland, while the third, arabah, refers to a waterless region.
“Every generation of Israel recognized itself in the wilderness,” Sister Timothea said, noting that the psalmists made use of the wilderness motif, as did the Second Vatican Council when they invoked the image of the church as a pilgrim “people on the way.”
She described three basic themes relating to the wilderness journey: the challenges faced and the providence of God; intimacy with God and how we find it; and temptations and rebellions.
Regarding challenges, she noted that while life in Egypt had been hard on the Israelites, and included genocide, there was a certain daily routine and availability of basic necessities that looked more and more attractive to them as they experienced the hardships in the desert. “With the exodus,” she said, “there was a momentary high, a celebration of freedom from that hard life. And then reality set in. ... Everything familiar and somewhat comfortable was gone.” As a result, she said, the people panicked, first wanting to turn around and go back, and then clamoring for a new leader and even a new god.
God provided the Israelites with food one day at a time — manna and then quail, and their water came only when and where God told Moses to strike a rock. Depending upon God’s providence, she said, “was the big lesson that had to be learned.”
Each person present has been through an analogous wilderness experience, she noted: loss of a job, a move to another city, the death of someone central in our life, a natural disaster that wipes out everything we had, a lawsuit that has ruined one’s reputation. “There are many entrances into the wilderness,” she said, “as many as there are people.” What is important at this time, she noted, is to surrender to God and allow him to be in charge.
On the theme of intimacy, she noted that God calls his people into the intimacy of his presence through prayer. There is a covenant or spousal relationship between God and his people, she observed, quoting God’s words in the Book of the Prophet Hosea, which tells of God bending down to Israel as a child whom he dearly loves despite his transgressions.
When the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, she noted, God would direct Moses where to pitch a tent, which he would enter to commune with God. The power of God would descend into the tent as a cloud. When the cloud rose, it was a sign they should strike camp and move on.
“What are the signs that I know in my life in this wandering in the wilderness of God’s intimacy,” said Sister Timothea, encouraging those present to ask themselves that question and be aware that we are part of a faith community, so not wandering alone in the wilderness. She added that the evangelists’ use of the Exodus motif in writing their Gospels was central to the great Paschal Mystery. Jesus, she related, spent 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness following his baptism in the Jordan to prepare himself for his ministry, analogous to the Israelites’ time of preparation in the wilderness.
Concerning the theme of temptation, she described Jesus’ temptations by Satan during his wilderness time and his coming through this. Having been tempted in all things, like we are, she said, he is well acquainted with our own fears. She added that Jesus often went into the wilderness at important times. “This returning to the wilderness, to be one attuned to the Lord, is a theme that the prophets continuously return to,” she said. It was a getting back to essentials.
“The early members of the church, the early Christians, valued this sense of wilderness very much,” she noted, recalling Paul’s going into the desert immediately following his conversion and the examples of the Desert Fathers, such as St. Anthony of the Desert, as well as St. Benedict in his withdrawal from Rome and St. Francis of Assisi, with his mountain hermitage.
We are often afraid of these “quiet places” which we need, she said, noting the whole retreat movement shows “the importance of the desert, a wilderness where we go apart, for a time, to be available to the Lord” and answer the questions in our lives.
Referring to those moments we face when we feel the rug has been pulled out from under us and we are faced with a loss of control, Sister Timothea spoke of the spiritual need we have at these times to remember that we are “on the move.” “We’re not meant to pitch a permanent tent here in the wilderness,” she said, but to keep moving forth with God.
It is this spiritual time, the seminary professor said, that forces us to ask those important questions: “Who is God? Who am I? What’s it about? What does this moment in time have to do with eternity?”