THE WAY OF THE DESERT

The Call of the Desert in the Bible and Orthodox Tradition

In Scripture, God does not always speak in public squares. He does not always come to the heart of cities. He often calls in the desert , where man is alone, destitute, without support.

The desert is not just a geographical place. It is a spiritual place , a passage, a purification. It is that sacred void where God works on the soul.

A God who calls in the desert

When God prepares Moses to free his people, he calls them aside, into the silence of the desert. When Elijah flees the world and lets himself die, it is in the desert that an angel comes to feed him. John the Baptist did not preach in the streets: he cried out in the desert . And Christ himself, before any preaching, plunged into solitude for forty days .

For what ?

Because the desert strips away. It shatters illusions . It confronts hunger, cold, boredom, and fear. But it is there, and only there, that God can rebuild.

The Birth of Monasticism in the Desert

In the 4th century, the first monks fled the cities for the Egyptian desert. Not to hide from the world, but to seek the Face of God without distraction.

Saint Anthony, Saint Macarius, Saint Sisoes: they lived alone, in caves or huts. They prayed, fasted, and worked. They fought against impure thoughts, against pride, against the temptation to return to comfort.

They founded a spirituality of the essential , a harsh wisdom, but of absolute beauty: that of the heart naked before God .

The desert, place of alliance

Throughout the Bible, the desert is not simply a place of passage. It becomes a place of covenant, a theater where God acts in a particular way.

It was in the desert that the people of Israel received the Law.
This is where God reveals himself as the One who does not give up , the One who rains down manna, who makes water spring from the rock, who walks in the cloud.
The desert becomes the place where God trains His people , far from Egypt, but not yet in the Promised Land.

This dynamic remains valid in the Orthodox tradition: the desert, even the interior one, is the place where man ceases to feed on his securities and turns to another nourishment—one that does not pass away.

The desert is a space of preparation , a time of slow formation.
It reveals what is essential, and makes possible a true encounter between God and man