A Deserted Place

Gospel Reflection for September 3, 2025

“At daybreak, Jesus left and went to a deserted place.” Luke 4:42

Today’s Gospel has a variety of aspects to it. From curing to exorcism, Our Lord does wonders for the people to inspire their faith. But found in the midst of these great acts is one of simplicity and, I would argue, even more importance. Our Lord wakes in the morning and goes to a deserted place. St. Mark gives a little more detail in his account:

“Rising very early before dawn, He left and went off to a deserted place, where He prayed.” Mark 1:35

Our Lord goes to a deserted place, that is, a place where He could be alone and He enters into a time of prayer. This time, beginning His day in prayer serves as a very important reminder for us to do the same. I wrote about that here.

Today, I want to concentrate on the idea of the deserted place as an analogy for the act of contemplation. In the Catholic Spiritual tradition, the great spiritual writers all agree that the way of contemplation is in the normative way of sanctity, and all are called to it. This means that all men are called to attain the heights of the spiritual life, ascending through the purgative way, through the dark night of the senses and into the illuminative way to infused contemplation. This infused contemplation prepares one for the dark night of the soul and finally, the unitive way.

This infused contemplation is a gift from God in which we enter into the interior wine cellar of our souls and our outward sense experience withdraws from the outside world. We are moved by the Spirit into an intimate contemplation of the mysteries of the faith, not in a discursive act of reasoning, but in a simple view of the truth.¹ We are not longer forcing ourselves into a meditative practice on a certain mystery of the faith, perhaps playing the scene over in our minds and attempting to dwell on it for a length of time. That form of meditation is a lesser form of prayer, still important and necessary for the Christian, but it precedes infused contemplation.

Rather, this form of prayer takes one away from their willed movement from one act to another and from one imaginative through to the next. Instead, it places the object of love before their mind and places their attention on divine things. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange writes following St. John of the Cross:

“At this moment the life of the soul is entirely simple and concentrated on the object that it loves; the soul looks with a simple gaze at the perfection of God, especially His goodness, or the radiation of it in some divine work.”²

This is simplified prayer where we are no longer dependent on our reasoning and will to ground us in a meditative experience. St. Francis De Sales gives us the distinction:

“Meditation considers in minute detail and, as it were, item by item the objects that are suitable to excite our love; but contemplation gazes with simplicity and concentration on the object that it loves.”³

For the spiritual writers, meditation gives way to contemplation:

“Prayer is called meditation until it has produced the honey of devotion; after that it changes into contemplation…”⁴

Our Lord shows us that we ought to steal ourselves away from the sensible world and enter into infused contemplation with God. It is important to note that all of the spiritual writers agree that this is not something that we can switch on in ourselves but, instead, it is something we must predispose ourselves to and ask of God. With time, practice, and disposition, we can be granted entry into the illuminative way and the sublimity of infused contemplation. We can begin that journey through doing as Christ did, retreat to a deserted place and enter into conversation with God.

1. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae IIa IIae q. 180.

2. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Three Ages of the Interior Life Vol II, 280.

3. St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on Divine Love, Bk VI, Ch. 5.

4. Ibid. Ch. 3.