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The Desert Taught Saint Arnold Janssen – OpEd

I still remember the first time silence unnerved me. Early morning. Empty house. Phone face down on the table. I had planned to pray. Instead, I paced the kitchen. The quiet felt too loud, like it was waiting for something I did not know how to give. That is when I started to understand why the saints kept disappearing into lonely places. They were not running away. They were letting everything else fall away so something truer could finally get through. Saint Arnold Janssen figured this out long before most of us did. His deserts were not always sand and sky. Sometimes they were forests. Sometimes a bare room. A long fast. Weeks alone. Like the holy men before him, Arnold Janssen stepped back from the noise and the accolades to meet God where distractions could not follow. Be still, and know that I am God. Arnold Janssen learnt that stillness is not passive. It is demanding. It strips you down. He was capable. Respected. A man with promise. But again and again, he chose withdrawal. He went looking for places where his strength would run out. In that way, his story echoes what Scripture has always shown us. Moses met God in the wilderness. Elijah fled into the desert, exhausted and afraid, and heard God in a whisper. Even Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert before his ministry began. The desert comes before clarity. Always. For Arnold Janssen, the desert was a place of honest reckoning. Away from praise, he had to face himself. His fears. His ambition. The mission. The need to be in control. The desert has a way of dragging these things into the light. There is nowhere to hide when comfort is stripped away. My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Arnold Janssen prayed those words with his whole life, not just his lips. What makes Arnold Janssen’s desert experience so compelling is not that it was heroic. It is that it was human. He struggled. He doubted. He wrestled with what God was asking. His choices looked impractical to others. Sometimes extreme. But the desert does not care about approval. It only asks for faithfulness. I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. Arnold Janssen trusted that tenderness would come, even when it was slow. There is a moment in every desert when prayer goes dry. Words feel hollow. God seems far off. Arnold Janssen did not quit. He stayed. That stay changed him. It softened his judgement. Sharpened his compassion. When he finally returned to the community, he carried the desert with him. Silence had taught him how to listen. Hunger had taught him mercy. Loneliness had taught him love. I think of Arnold Janssen when life feels crowded and thin at the same time. When the calendar is full but the soul feels half-starved. We are quick to call discomfort a sign we are doing something wrong. The saints saw it differently. The desert was not punishment. It was preparation. In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Arnold Janssen let the wilderness prepare him, even when it hurt. His life reminds us that depth is rarely formed in ease. It grows where we surrender control. In the desert, Arnold Janssen learnt that God is not found in constant motion but in faithful presence. He learnt to pray without rushing. To serve without needing recognition. To trust without seeing what comes next. And those lessons did not stay in the desert. They shaped every relationship and decision that followed. I think back to that quiet morning and smile now. I still fidget sometimes. Silence still brings up things I would rather avoid. But Arnold Janssen’s witness steadies me. The unease is not the enemy. It is the doorway. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. The desert awakens that hunger. Arnold Janssen did not escape the world by entering the desert. He learnt how to love it better. And in that way, his lonely paths still invite us today. Step away. Stay awhile. Let God speak. This article was published by VivatDeus.org