“The Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness and he remained there for forty days, and was tempted by Satan. He was with the wild beasts, and the angels looked after him.” (Mark 1:12-13)
In the Gospel for the first Sunday of Lent, why does St Mark mention that Jesus “was with the wild beasts”?
It brings to mind conflicting examples of beasts both threatening and helping God’s chosen ones: the Israelites in the desert were bitten by snakes and fed on quails; Daniel was threatened by lions and David by bears too, whereas Elijah was fed by ravens and John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey.
But perhaps the key texts to consider are Genesis 3:15 and Psalm 91.
God says to the serpent who has just seduced our first parents into sin, that “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
The threat of snakes, and more generally of beasts, began with the sin of our first parents, whose disobedience ruptured the special grace protecting them from external harm in Eden.
The seed of the woman will fight the serpent and they will bruise each other: this prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus was “bruised for our sins” (Isaiah 53:5) in his Passion and Death, and so stamped down the devil to hell.
This struggle against Satan began in those forty days of fasting and prayer in the desert; there too he had to be wary of threatening beasts as he spiritually repelled the devil’s attacks.
But Jesus was helped by the angels who “ministered to him” (Mark 1:13). This recalls and fulfils Psalm 91:11-13:
For he will give his angels charge of you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.
Here we see again the presence of dangerous beasts, but they are overcome by the prior help of angels: since the angels are guarding the psalmist’s subject, he can trample the lions and snakes.
Let’s begin Lent with trust in the power of the angels to help us fight against the spiritual beasts assailing us. Just as for Jesus and the psalmist, the angels’ help comes first; only after we receive that help are we expected to struggle against these supernatural threats.
And let’s remember that the Holy Spirit is always in ultimate control of these beasts, and uses them as instruments to purify us; just as the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert, so He is the one leading us into Lent.
In turning to today’s second reading, who were the spirits who rebelled in the time of Noah? We are told:
“In the body he was put to death, in the spirit he was raised to life, and, in the spirit, he went to preach to the spirits in prison. Now it was long ago, when Noah was still building that ark which saved only a small group of eight people ‘by water’, and when God was still waiting patiently, that these spirits refused to believe.” (1 Peter 3:18-20)
The fallen angels fell from grace before the creation of the world, so these spirits are different beings.
Jewish tradition, especially the first book of Enoch (a non-Biblical text which is quoted in the letter of Jude and referenced in 2 Peter 2:4) can provide an answer: the flood in Noah’s time could not destroy a group of corrupt angelic beings and so they were imprisoned by God instead.
So in today’s second reading Jesus is said to preach to these spirits “in the spirit”, i.e. when His soul was separated from His body in death. Jesus’s soul descended to “hell” (not the place where the damned remain eternally but where those who died just before Jesus waited for him) and there he preached salvation and condemnation: salvation to the just and condemnation to these angelic beings who rebelled in Noah’s time.
So at the moment of Jesus’s greatest weakness, His death and separation of soul and body, He showed His greatest strength over fallen spirits. So too for us, our moments of greatest weakness and “death” can become the moments of our greatest victory over evil spirits if we abandon ourselves into the arms of our Heavenly Father as Jesus did.
In His descent among the dead, Jesus also met His earthly father, Joseph, waiting with the just for redemption.
Let’s ask for the prayers of St Joseph, whose “third Sunday” is today, following the ancient devotion to the seven Sundays preceding his feast on March 19th.
Photo: The devil tempts Jesus whilst He is alone in the desert, image circa 1754. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.)