Уединение пустыни

Having received baptism from John, filled with the Holy Spirit, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the beasts, and angels ministered to Him.” During these forty days and forty nights He did not eat anything; at last He became hungry. This weakness of the human body gave rise to the first temptation from the devil, which was followed by other stronger ones. “And having finished all the temptations, the devil, overcome by the power of the word of the Lord, departed from Him for the time being.” (Matt. 4:1) – (Matt. 4:11), (Mk. 1:12) – (Mk. 1:13), (Luke 4:1) – (Luke 4:13). A stay in the desert, a forty-day fast, repelling temptations from the devil, and the ministry of Angels are presented in the Gospel as preparatory circumstances for the worldwide preaching of the Gospel and for the accomplishment of our redemption. So, in the midst of desert solitude, the Almighty Lord had to arm himself with strength to fight the enemies of our salvation, to lift the burden of our sins, to enlighten our souls, to appease the Heavenly Father to us, to give us the Holy Life-giving Spirit. The solitude of the desert is a field for gathering and strengthening the strength of the spirit. To accomplish spiritual deeds, you need to spend a greater or lesser number of days and even years outside the rumors of everyday life, alone with God, in order to freely direct your spiritual eyes to Him alone, learn to expect help and admonition from Him alone, endure fears and temptations, and strengthen your will in the service to which the right hand of the Most High calls you. This path for the education of the human spirit, foreshadowed in the lives of the prophets Elijah and John the Baptist, sanctified by the Lord the Savior, has become common for those of God's chosen ones who are destined for special great deeds and extraordinary ministries in life. The Apostle Paul, having been baptized in Damascus, retired to Arabia for three years: here the grace of God received by him, in the midst of desert solitude, transforms him from a former zealot for the letter of the law into a herald of the truth of Christ, and then he is called to his great work as a teacher of languages. An example of desert living was given by many holy ascetics of the church in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Mount Athos. The great teachers and saints of the universe, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and John Chrysostom lived and labored in the deserts before they entered the field of public service and showed the world the light of their minds and their unyielding will in goodness. There is a whole ascetic literature in which all the methods of that continuous, invisible battle waged by God's chosen ones against the enemies of salvation - the world, the temptations of the flesh and the primordial enemy the devil - are explained in detail - and the degrees by which they ascend to spiritual perfection. Such an example of education and affirmation of the spiritual was shown to us by our great ascetics Sergius of Radonezh, Seraphim of Sarov and others. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit, as the Gospel concludes its story about the desert solitude of the Savior, to Galilee and the rumor about Him spread throughout the surrounding country (Luke 1:14). On the way to Galilee, the Lord visited John. Desert solitude. Artist Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy (1837–1887). The painting is in the Tretyakov Gallery. You might be interested in: