Isaiah proclaims God’s message to a people in exile, to a people who wanted to return to their holy city. They were bitter, angry, and distraught. Yet, Isaiah gives God’s people a message of hope. He assures them that better times are ahead. Though the nation of Israel feels forgotten and abandoned, God assures them that they are not. We live in the midst of our reality. And our reality in 2017 in America is a bit different than what was facing the people of Israel who had hopes of returning from exile. Before the monasteries were founded, men and women whon we know today as the Desert Fathers and Mothers went to the desert starting in the early third century to live as hermits and to withdraw from society. The Desert Fathers and Mothers had a great deal of influence on the development of the Early Church and later were the inspiration for the founding of monastic communities. St John of Egypt is a saint whom we celebrate this week during Lent. After starting his life as a carpenter, he apprenticed under a hermit, and after that hermit died, he set off for the desert wilderness in the middle of the fourth century where he lived in a cell that he carved out of a rocky cliff. He walled himself into those cells until he died. He left a small window in the cell where he could receive visitors and where people could bring him water and food. Those cells were rediscovered in the early 1900s. Many people looked to John of Egypt and the other Desert Fathers and Mothers for wisdom, including the emperor. His life of prayer and self-denial inspired saints in the Early Church such as Jerome and Augustine. Not all of us are called to be hermits or monks like John of Egypt. But we are called to hear God’s voice in our lives, to spend time in reflection and discernment to hear God speaking to us in the silence.
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