On the first Sunday of Lent, the Holy Father Pope Francis took his cue from the Gospel of Mark that presents us with Christ’s temptation in the desert. Speaking during the Angelus address, he reflected on the symbolic significance of the wilderness, urging all Christians to “enter the wilderness, that is, silence, the inner world, listening to the heart, in contact with the truth.”
In the desert, the Pontiff continued, Christ “was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him. Wild beasts and angels were His company.” He explained that in a symbolic sense, “they are our company too: indeed, when we enter the inner wildness, we can encounter wild beasts and angels there.”
“In the spiritual life, we can think of them [wild beasts] as the disordered passions that divide our heart, trying to take possession of it. Warning that these passions “entice us; they seem seductive,” he said. “If we are not careful, we risk being torn apart by them.”
And giving a name to these “beasts” of the soul, the Pope described them as “the lust for wealth, which imprisons us in connivance and dissatisfaction, the vanity of pleasure, which condemns us to restlessness and solitude, and the craving for fame, which gives rise to insecurity and a continuous need for confirmation and prominence. ”They are “wild” beasts, he said, and as such, they must be tamed and fought; otherwise, they will devour our freedom. He also stated that; “We need to go into the wilderness to become aware of their presence and to face them.”
Then, focusing on the angelic presence in the desert, the Holy Father said angels are “God’s messengers, who help us, who do us good; indeed, their characteristic, according to the Gospel, is service.” While contrasting this image with the possessive nature of disordered passions, he said they are “the exact opposite of possession, typical of the passions.”
While also highlighting the transformative power of divine inspirations, Pope Francis elaborated on the fact that “While temptations tear us apart, the good divine inspirations unify us in harmony: they quench the heart, infuse the taste of Christ, ‘the flavour of Heaven’.” Thus’ the Pontiff upheld the need for silence and prayer to grasp these thoughts and feelings inspired by God, saying: “Lent is the time to do this.”
The Holy Father concluded his address with two crucial questions:
“What are the disordered passions, the ‘wild beasts’ that agitate in my heart?”
And, “To permit the voice of God to speak to my heart and to preserve it in goodness, am I thinking of retreating a little into the ‘wilderness’, that is, of dedicating space to consider this?”
“May the Holy Virgin,” the Pope prayed, “who kept the Word and did not let herself be touched by the temptations of the evil one, help us during this season of Lent.”
