Lent Guide: In the Shadow of Gethsemaneಮಾದರಿ

Place of temptation

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

– Mary Oliver in Wild Geese

...exhausted

When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow– Luke 22:45

In tough times, we often, like the disciples, reach the point of total exhaustion. Tired of thinking, tired of crying, tired of trying. If we could only sleep and withdraw from all the thoughts, questions, societal pressure, and situations we face. What is going to happen? What should I do? Am I making a difference? Am I good enough? Are things going to work out? When will this suffering end?

Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese acknowledges this inborn human struggle and shares wisdom to free us from this burden. When we look at nature and live like wild geese without questioning our place and worth in this world, we will find what we’re looking for.

Before Jesus leaves the disciples alone, He says to them: ”Pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” What kind of temptation could He be speaking about? Somewhere between Jesus leaving and returning, the disciples moved from prayer to sleep. Was the temptation perhaps to withdraw from everything, to give over to the exhaustion, and to sleep? Or is it that Jesus knows that when you are exhausted, you are more vulnerable to temptation?

Where do you go when you are exhausted? Where do you withdraw to? Is it a habit – good or bad? For the disciples, it was sleep, perhaps. It’s important to understand where we go when we are exhausted so that we can resist the temptation.

Prayer: I ask for a deep consciousness of Your love and work in my life.